Gallery 1
We Watch Them to Be Ready for Their Arrival
Siying Zhou
The nuns at the Abbotsford Convent once used this front room to make cakes for the visiting priests. In response to the site’s history, Zhou embodies shared experiences, reconstructing a version of the past that does not belong to her. By juxtaposing the labour of the nuns with that of Chinese immigrant women, Zhou draws attention to the invisible labour and love that these women give under unequal power and social structures. Through making this installation, Zhou fragments singular readings of history with multiple cultural perspectives, creating a presence for immigrants like herself in contemporary Australian history. Conflict between past/present and Catholic/Chinese traditions propose new questions to the idea of otherness.
