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A 1960s NASA experiment with dolphins and the painful erasure of Indigenous languages during colonisation serve as the unlikely inspirations behind a quirky new art installation in Victoria.
Local artist Amrita Hepi, a proud Bundjulung and Ngapuhi woman, lampoons the absurdity of teaching marine mammals English by dancing with an inflatable dolphin in her newly unveiled video installation, Scripture for a smoke screen.
The dynamic work, commissioned by the Australian Centre for Moving Image, explores the absence of language through a First Nations gaze. It also addresses identity, intimacy and desire.
"Language is a dynamic force, it's always been shaped, and in order for it to be shaped it needs to be used," Ms Hepi told AAP on Thursday.
"When you're told that you can't do something or you can't speak something, well, it does erase a lot of things, especially through different genocides.
"It's not only the genocide of people, it's the genocide of spoken language and a sense of sovereignty."
The professional dancer is among eight Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creatives showcasing their work at a new exhibition, How I See It: Blak Art and Film.
Works include moving images, installations, documentaries, photography and video games.
Curator Kate ten Buuren, a proud Taungurung woman, said it was important for Indigenous people to share their own stories.
"First Nations storytelling defies traditional notions of art-making that Western frameworks enforce," she said at the exhibition premiere on Thursday.
"We tell our stories through art, on film, through dance, ceremony and by picking up new technologies."
Other artists featured at the exhibition include Jazz Money, Joel Sherwood Spring, Jarra Karalinar Steel and Peter Waples-Crowe, alongside works by Essie Coffey OAM, Destiny Deacon, and Steven Rhall.
