Storytelling Liberation
19 Feb to 11 May 2025
Alex Martinis Roe in collaboration with Katerina Teaiwa, ASKI Contemporary Social History Archives, Gladys Kalichini, Alexandra Juhasz, Andre Ortega and Diana Betanzos. Supported by curator Amelia Wallin
Storytelling Liberation is a new video installation by Australian artist Alex Martinis Roe, and her first major exhibition in regional Victoria. Across five videos, each approximately 20 minutes in duration, the exhibition fosters international anti-colonial and feminist alliances by sharing tools for telling stories about social justice movements. For Martinis Roe, who has long focused on networks of solidarity, sharing methods of doing history has the potential to contribute to liberation; building what she calls ‘solidarity-in-difference’ and creating alliances among different positionalities.
Begun in 2022, Martinis Roe’s research led her to develop relationships with five international collaborators, including scholar, artist and activist Katerina Teaiwa of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American heritage; ASKI Contemporary Greek Social History Archives in Athens; Zambian artist and art historian Gladys Kalichini; North American queer-feminist media producer, theorist and activist, Alexandra Juhasz; and Mexico City-based narrative practitioners and activists Andrea Ortega and Diana Betanzos. Learning from their varied practices, this exhibition defines and demonstrates a set of methods to research and tell stories about liberation movements.
Looking Slowly, Starting from Place explores Pacific scholar and activist Katerina Teaiwa’s way of looking slowly at archival photographs to uncover Banaban resistance against phosphate mining in the 20th Century.
Collective Biography documents how ASKI, the leading archive of the Greek Left, undertook a collective process of making public history about the lives of women in the European Resistance in WWII and afterwards, in collaboration with 40 history students from across Europe.
Mnemonic Rituals demonstrates how Gladys Kalichini, a Zambian artist and art historian, works with rituals to remember the significant participation of women in the decolonial revolutions in Zambia and Zimbabwe in the 1960’s.
Media as Process presents the feminist media methods Alexandra Juhaszdeveloped within the community video movement in 1990’s New York City to collectively address how women of colour have been affected by AIDS.
Re-Authoring Narratives explores activistsAndrea Ortega and Diana Betanzos’use of narrative practices to document the movement against femicide on the periphery of Mexico City and how they build cultures of resistance through choosing which questions they ask, listening carefully and retelling stories in ways that make people stronger.
The exhibition is framed by a graphic identity produced in collaboration with Swiss designer Vela Arbutina.
The exhibition is made accessible to diverse publics through public programs, including a lecture and workshop by Alex Martinis Roe and a film screening program of video and film works by the project collaborators, with dates to be announced.
Read more about the individual films in the exhibition through the wall labels [PDF 106.3 KB].
Image: Alex Martinis Roe and Gladys Kalichini, 'Mnemonic Rituals', 4K video, 15:03, 2024
Storytelling Liberation featured a suite of public programs including an International Women's Day opening event, a workshop, and a film screening program.
Workshop with exhibiting artist Alex Martinis Roe
Saturday 31 May 2025 from 11 am to 4 pm
Anyone with an interest in documenting, archiving, theorising or telling stories about social justice movements is invited to join exhibiting artist Alex Martinis Roe in a special one-day workshop at La Trobe Art Institute.
In this workshop, Alex will engage participants in the collaborative working process of the Storytelling Liberation project. Participants will learn about each other’s approach to telling stories about social justice movements, and together identify how such approaches can be made accessible to others.
This workshop is for practitioners and students from any occupation, field, discipline or political commitment.
Film program
Join us for a film screening program in our auditorium, featuring films that contextualise and extend the concerns of the exhibition, Storytelling Liberation, selected by Alex Martinis Roe and her collaborators. A different film will be screened each week across four Sundays during the exhibition run.
This program accompanies Alex Martinis Roe’s exhibition Storytelling Liberation. Intended as invitation, resource and instrument, the exhibition seeks to foster international anti-colonial and feminist alliances by sharing tools for telling stories about social justice movements.
Storytelling Liberation was made in collaboration with Katerina Teaiwa, ASKI Contemporary Greek Social History Archives, Gladys Kalichini, Alexandra Juhasz, Andrea Ortega and Diana Betanzos.
Schedule
We Care: Video for Careproviders of People Affected by AIDS, Women’s AIDS Video Enterprise (WAVE)
32 mins. (1990)
Sunday March 16, 2 pm
The Women’s AIDS Video Enterprise (WAVE) was a unique “video support” group sponsored by the Brooklyn AIDS Task Force and arts funding organizations. For six months, seven women met to share information about providing care to people with AIDS with a particular focus on communities of colour in NYC. “We Care” is the group’s final project.
Señorita Extraviada (Missing Young Woman), Lourdes Portillo (Dir.)
74 mins. (2001)
Sunday March 23, 2 pm
This award-winning film investigates the kidnapping, rape and murder of more than 350 young women from assembly plants that line the Mexican-US border. It documents a two-year search for answers and unravels the layers of complicity in a crime of this magnitude.
Landscapes of Resistance, Marta Popivoda (Dir.)
95 mins. (2021)
Sunday March 30, 2 pm
The main character of Landscapes of Resistance, Sonja, was one of the first female partisans in Yugoslavia and helped lead the resistance in Auschwitz. For over 10 years, director Marta Popivoda and Sonja's granddaughter and co-author of the film, Ana Vujanovic, recorded their conversations with Sonja. These interviews are overlaid with footage of the landscapes and sites of her story. What starts off as a celebration of the resistance of one woman and her comrades gradually turns into a cinematic antifascist manifesto as the filmmakers become more and more confronted with the rise of fascism in Europe today.
Vai, directed by Nicole Whippy, ‘Ofa-Ki-Levuka Guttenbeil-Likiliki, Matasila Freshwater, Amberley Jo Aumua, Mīria George, Marina Alofagia McCartney, Dianna Fuemana, and Becs Arahanga
88min (2019)
Sunday April 6, 2 pm
“We sweat and cry salt water, so we know that the ocean is really in our blood” so reads an epigraph by Teresia Teaiwa to opens the film Vai. Made by nine female Pacific filmmakers, filmed in seven different Pacific countries: Fiji, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Kuki Airani (Cook Islands), Samoa, Niue and Aotearoa (New Zealand), Vai, meaning water, follows the lifelong journey of girl.