Conversations

Runway x Cool Change Contemporary: the hands should have no peace

Stas Julien-Martial

Runway Journal has partnered with All Conference to present a series of Conversations from its network of artist-led, experimental and cross-disciplinary arts organisations around Australia. Throughout the year, 16 organisations will each present a new piece on Runway’s Conversations platform.

The fourth Runway Journal x All Conference Conversation comes from Cool Change Contemporary, situated on the unceded lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation.

Cool Change Contemporary asked writer Stas Julien-Martial to respond to the Perth Festival exhibition the hands should have no peace (Cool Change Contemporary, 19 Feb – 18 Apr 2021).

Pony, Not Inherent In Intersecting Is To Cut, To Join Is Also, 2021, video. Photo courtesy of Cool Change Contemporary and Mayma Awaida.

I start with Chiluba Young’s images in Gallery 1
I know black women dancing and black love
I grew up with black women dancing in black space
I know tension unleashing
and how that is different to a white body moving in a white space

Jade O'Sullivan, Whimsical Amputee Honey, 2021, Acrylic on canvas. Photo courtesy of Cool Change Contemporary and Mayma Awaida.

a year ago, I bought a t-shirt that says
‘marginalised bodies moving is power’
I think about this every time I move in a rave

I end with Leila Doneo Baptist picking dragon fruit with long fingers,
pulling lychees out of their cases
this, too, I know
my sisters and I at the base of the lychee tree in my grandparents’ yard
a basket at our feet, long fingers grabbing,
reaching for all that is out of reach

and in-between it all I walk:
black, used to be woman;
white-passing, non-binary human,
knowing very well of the loss and grief Toni Morrison tells us of in Sula

the body must move and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should have no peace, and the throat should release all the yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity of loss. [1]

A video diptych with a dark-haired female figure on a vibrant blue background on each screen.

Leila Doneo Baptist, Five Exotic Fruits You Haven't Tried - This Is Not A Self Portrait, 2019, three channel video. Photo courtesy of Cool Change Contemporary and Mayma Awaida.

Chiluba Young, Lovers Dance, 2020, photographs on paper and video. Photo courtesy of Cool Change Contemporary and Mayma Awaida.

in the video capture of Pony’s work
I see the throat releasing all the yearning
but the throat is that of the string
and the yearning is that of broken glass and porcelain

if anything, I know how grief sits
its gait ever changing

sometimes, it is hard backed, stiff,
and sometimes it is curled to the mouth of the pillowcase
teeth clattering and begging at it to open

if anything, I know how grief decides to move with you
swaying at the kitchen island together like a well-crafted dance

it makes sense to build galleries out of it

a gallery mostly silent except for
Doneo Baptist’s iPhone ringing out radar at unknown intervals
and the smashing of what looks like precious things by Alexander Turner, Kelsey Diamond, Sage Pbbbt and Aisyah Aaqil Sumito

but they are not loud nor disruptive
you are left to quietly ponder Andrew J Williams and Jade O’Sullivan’s artworks
consider sovereignty:
not ceded to O’Sullivan
explored by Williams as a part of the personhood we embody when living on stolen land
and for Claudia Nicholson we map a landscape with her
consider colonialism and how it can be replaced with a dream

how that, too, is also a grief to reckon with

how white fellas and non-Indigenous peoples

stretch themselves across a land,

a land ‘in-filled and concretised’ [2]

and we can love Country, step lightly, show up for the fight,

but the land is still what it is (stolen)

and we are still trailing fingers through the same Derbarl Yerrigan,

pulling fruits apart with those same fingers,

holding the string that breaks the glass

moving them lightly through the air in a dance

because the hands shouldn’t have peace

they are a tight fist we hold in the middle of the street

taking time in Cool Change Contemporary I am struck by how well curated grief can be
how we can adapt the landscape to hide what we don’t wish to shake off
how similarly, there is no shying away from the bitterness,
how Morrison writes, ‘it was not a fist-shaking grief they were keening but rather a simple obligation to say something, do something, feel something’ [3]

the hands should have no peace allows for a solemn quiet and a muted anger,
one that can be sat in and held on to

it questions colonialism, begs us to consider owed sovereignty; the black woman who is allowed joy; the unabashed voyeurism of media; and which bodies are allowed to take up space and where

it asks the gallerygoer to take a deep breath and release

[1] Toni Morrison, Sula (1973) 107.
[2] Andrew J Williams, the hands should have no peace (2021).
[3] Toni Morrison, Sula (1973) 107.

Cool Change Contemporary

Cool Change Contemporary is a multi-gallery artist-run-initiative located within the historic Bon Marche Arcade building on Barrack Street in the Perth CBD. We host a monthly program of exhibitions supported by regular performances, screenings, workshops and events, and are home to a shop selling artist-made goods and publications.

Cool Change is the arrival of a cold front in the afternoon or evening after a day of high summertime temperatures. It is the sense of interconnectedness with your surroundings, and a feeling that things are about to pick up. Cool Change Contemporary stands for critically engaged work, an accessible, welcoming environment and an agile, responsive outlook.

Stas Julien-Martial

Stas Julien-Martial is a queer, non-binary Mauritian-Australian living in Boorloo on Whadjuk Noongar booja. They are currently studying Professional Writing and Publishing at Curtin University, have a keen interest in poetry, and film photography. They’re doing their best, how are you?