Indigenous Futures Seminar Series - SUNA (Middle Ground)

The Indigenous Futures Centre (IFC) welcomes members of the South-East Queensland Indigenous community, Indigenous staff, as well as Indigenous under and post-graduate students and visitors, to the IFC Seminar Series on Thursday July 10 from 10:00am to 11:00am.

In this in-person and online seminar, UQ Art Museum curators Aunty Sana Balai (Hako) and Jocelyn Flynn (Notsi) will present on an upcoming project at UQ Art Museum: SUNA. Yuriyal Bridgeman’s monumental installation SUNA (Middle Ground) 2020 is a beacon for storytelling, idea-sharing, and connection. Represented on the front lawn of the University of Queensland Art Museum is a raun haus (traditional Papua New Guinea Highlands round house) that is the artist’s home and the heart of Bridgeman’s extended family, the Yuri Alaiku tribe and his renown practice in the Waghi Valley in PNG. The raun haus serves as the meeting point for the collective founded by Bridgeman, Haus Yuriyal. More than just their studio, the raun haus is a safe place to gather in times of tribal warfare, as well as to share and exchange cultural knowledge through artmaking. The presentation of this work coincides with the celebration of Papua New Guinea’s 50th Independance Celebration in September 2025.

Info: Sana Balai is a Bougainville elder from Buka Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG), who migrated to Australia in 1990. She is a curator, writer and researcher renowned for her work with Pacific, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collections across major institutions globally including the National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Logan Art Gallery, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She is currently Mittlehauser Great Ocean Scholar at UQ Art Museum.


Jocelyn Flynn (She/her) is Notsi from Niu Ailan province, Papua Niugini with Anglo-Celtic linages. She is an emerging writer, curator, and Assistant Curator at the University of Queensland Art Museum. Her curatorial and cultural work responds to memories, stories and traditions of her heritage. She is particularly interested in the meeting points of geo-politics, history and culture in contemporary art from the Great Ocean region.

Also check out other Arts events in Highgate Hill, Workshops in Highgate Hill, Meetups in Highgate Hill.