Artists statement

In Moorina Bonini’s Bitja (Fire), we see a Koorie pattern emerge on river gum bark as it is revitalised and reformed through the smoke and fire. Bitja (Fire) is a reference to caring for Country, using fire as a healing tool to revitalise new beginnings or as a reference point for restoration. A poem accompanies the work:

Caring for my Country
Breathing
Country pulses and the blood in
my veins pulse in response
I walked outside and I put my
feet into the sand
Dirt
Water
Country I covered my feet with
Country one handful after
another
and buried myself in the space
Where I have always belonged.
Bitja (Fire) revitalises, and through the smoke and charcoal
Country heals.
Listen.

Artist Bio
Moorina Bonini is a proud descendant of the Yorta Yorta Dhulunyagen family clan of Ulupna and the Yorta Yorta, Wurundjeri, and Wiradjuri Briggs/McCrae family. As an artist of Aboriginal and Italian heritage, her practice critiques and disrupts the eurocentric frameworks that shape institutional perceptions of Indigenous identity. Grounded in Indigenous Knowledge systems, Bonini’s work challenges colonial narratives, re-centers Aboriginal perspectives, and examines the intersections of culture, history, and representation.

Bonini is particularly interested in practice-led research as a method for interrogating the western binaries and categorisations imposed upon Aboriginal peoples, both historically and in contemporary society. Through her work, she examines the ways in which Indigenous ways of knowing, doing, and being resist and transcend these imposed structures, creating space for self-determined representations of Aboriginal identities and experiences.

Working across installation, moving image and cultural practice, Bonini has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including at ACMI, The Shed (New York), Sydney Festival, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), the Centre for Contemporary Photography, and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Recent major commissions include Primavera: Young Australian Artists (2023) and her PhD exhibition presented across Bunjilaka Aboriginal Culture Centre, Melbourne Museum, and MADA Gallery (2023). She was selected for a Gertrude Contemporary studio residency (2024–2026).