Workshop: Interior Effects as an Outcome of War

Join artist Bonita Ely in a workshop to explore the ongoing, intergenerational effects of undiagnosed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) suffered by family members of returned soldiers.

During the workshop, Ely shares her family’s experiences following her father’s return home after the Second World War, and how this informed her artwork Interior Decoration in the 24th Biennale of Sydney.

When traumatised soldiers return home, when refugees and migrants flee from war-torn countries to seek safety, and when First Nations people are dispossessed from their own lands, trauma passes down generation after generation. The traumatising effects of war may be exposed directly and indirectly through epigenetic transfer, acute anxiety, insecurities, and family violence.

While PTSD is notoriously difficult to treat, Ely proposes that artistic expression, meditation, and sharing experiences openly may help ameliorate the insidious effects of this trauma. This workshop aims to offer a pathway to deeper understanding through self-reflection and a sense of community.

Bonita Ely is an Australian artist living in Sydney who creates conceptual, environmental and socio-political art through various media, such as sculpture, installation, performance, video, photography. Since the 1970s, she has been fascinated by science, communication, human impacts and the natural world, creating artworks that often use abject aesthetics, wry humour, her vivid imagination, lateral thinking, and forensic research. Ely invites viewers to actively engage with her installations and performances, addressing existential issues – environmental destruction, cultural interface, feminism, the zeitgeist.

*Note: Bonita Ely is not a psychologist, she is an artist speaking from research and personal experience.

Presented in conjunction with the 24th Biennale of Sydney, ‘Ten Thousand Suns’ at UNSW Galleries, 9 March – 10 June 2024.

Image: Bonita Ely, ‘Interior Effects’ public program at documenta 14, Parko Eleftherias, 2017. Photo: Stathis Mamalakis