Choir (2021)




From the Indian Ocean, Residency and Publication.

Researchers: Professor Kit Wise and Dr Debbie Symons

AEGIS UN Sustainable Development Goals 12, 13, 14 & 15.

Created as a residency and publication, From The Indian Ocean aims to fill a gap of contemporary art across the Indian Ocean in the otherwise well-researched theme of cultural exchange across oceans such as the Pacific or the Atlantic. Our aim is to further a discourse and understanding of how the ocean functions as a hub of transnationalism as well as aesthetic and conceptual experimentation, closely tied to oceanic thinking and the current ecological and environmental crisis. This project thus gathers theoretical and visual essays from artists, curators, scholars and thinkers that critically engage with the Indian Ocean as a series of interlinked places; as a natural and cultural site that expands our imagination and contributes to the emergence of a new perspective on correlations between art, ecology and identity.

From the Indian Ocean, edited by Camila Maissune, (Mozambique), Co-Edited and Art Directed by the visual artist Paulo Arraiano, (Portugal) and, on the scientific committee, the invited academics Nada Rasa (Pakistan), artistic director of Ishara Foundation, Stephen Muecke (Australia) from Flinders University, South Australia, and Pedro Pombo (India) from the University of Goa.

WATA is a publishing house bringing together artists, curators, researchers in history of art, anthropology and sciences through a written conceptual laboratory raising critical questions about current movements in contemporary societies. Our aim is to further theoretical discourse by developing and publishing conceptual research on the social, cultural and natural impact societies face today, including displacement and migration, as well as ecologic and environmental crisis.  WATA is an interdisciplinary and global project, which endeavours to work closely with researchers and artists from the European continent, Southeast Asia, Africa and South America – often with a focus on themes related to ecology, oceanic thinking, post-colonialism, diaspora and ethnography.

Acknowledgement of Country


AEGIS acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we work. We respectfully acknowledge their Elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters across Australia and its Dreaming.