Some voices carry

Arini Byng’s Some voices carry seeks to reflect the multiplicity of Black life, and her tandem connection to and disconnection from it. Looking to navigate her way back to a culture that feels at once close and distant, Byng opens a window onto familial histories and intimacies often excluded from public presentation and finds that the only way back is through her parents’ camera lens.

Some voices carry presents images captured by Byng’s Anglo-Celtic Australian mother, Anna, and her Black American father, Travis, during the mid-1980s and early ’90s. The earlier images document happy, everyday moments around the time of Byng’s elder sister’s birth and the acceptance and inclusion her mother experienced during those years. The later images reveal a small but important period of closeness and connection for Australian-born Byng, when her family returned to the US and she, at ages three and four, built core memories and feelings of Blackness.

The exhibition includes framed prints and photographs mounted on steel screens. These sculptural objects reference Byng’s paternal line and attempt to create a tangible link between Byng and her father’s birthplace, Pennsylvania, once the centre of steel manufacturing in the US.