Weaving is a powerful artistic and cultural practice that can bring people together, to learn, heal, and connect, write Professor Bronwyn Fredericks and Dr Angela Baeza in their reflection below from a recent exhibition in Cairns, Woven Together, Undivided We Rise.
Bronwyn Fredericks and Angela Baeza write:
The exhibition Woven Together: Undivided We Rise was a major showcase of work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women at the Cairns Art Gallery. Commissioned by the Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts in partnership with the North Australian Festival of Arts, it was previously exhibited as part of the festival.
Woven Together includes a range of women artists, including Erica Muriata, Aunty Rosalind Sailor, Michona Warria, Jaeda Lenoy, Kim Ah Sam, and Clare Jaque Vasquez and curated by Sabrina-Rose Toby.
The title, Woven Together: Undivided We Rise, represented the works of the artists, and the artists woven to each other via stories, histories, artistic practice and an artistic exchange of twenty-eight artists.
While the works are curated as single pieces, they are all connected via the theme, or in groups within specific areas of the gallery. In its entirety, the exhibition showcases strength, and community, while the weaving itself operates like the threads of connection.
Weaving was once an everyday activity for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. They did not just make an item as a decorative object or for the purpose of undertaking a craft, like a hobby. It was embedded in everyday life.
This is also described in the work of contemporary weaver Sonja Carmichael, Albers in Moon (2019). She explains that weaving is “one of the most ancient crafts… a method of forming a pliable plane of threads by interlacing them”.
In the past, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples used a range of items to make thread, including parts of plants, kelp, feathers, and hair. This depended on the region, knowledge of their Country, along with what they may have been able to use, or not use based on relationships, lore, and the different seasons and environmental changes.
A range of items were made from these such as necklaces, belts, tassels, collars, chest pieces, and baskets, fish traps, carrying vessels, and ceremonial items.
While different items may be used in the making of thread today – for example, nylon, manufactured raffia, wire, plastic, fabric, and other items – many of the items used in the past are still used today.
Memory, healing and strength
Weavers may work individually or together, and might combine ideas, and threads made from numerous different items, resulting in intriguing, fascinating works. When the works are undertaken together weaver also weave in part of themselves with each other.
The exhibition Woven Together: Undivided We Rise wove artistic practices, cultures, and individuals with each other. In this it was more than an exhibition of weaving and weavers.
The threads bind Indigenous contemporary and intergenerational knowledges, lived experiences, and practices, along with resistance, and continuity for the now and the future.
They highlighted sovereignty, identity, rights, land, family, the lived realities of the artists and their stories, and memories, and strengthened their individual work, and that of others in the exhibition. The exhibition site explained that each work served as a “vessel of memory, healing and strength”.
On viewing the exhibition, we could see how the memories were incorporated and how some of the past struggles continue to these contemporary times.
For example, the weaving titled Unceded, by Michona Warria with the words ‘TREATY NOW’, attached above where Victoria is on a map of Australia, reminds us of the work and progress made towards Treaty in that state.
Michona Warria and the other weavers demonstrate how weaving can function as a form of knowledge transmission, and how it embodies knowledge in and of itself as a process, and a complete work.
When weaving is undertaken with other weavers, they can engage in storytelling, teaching, witnessing, and healing. When it is undertaken across generations, it operates as a form of cultural and knowledge transmission. Weaving in this content enables cultural continuity despite what is happening in the world.
Woven Together: Undivided We Rise was showcased in the Courthouse Gallery, one of the buildings of the Cairns Art Gallery on a large city block in Cairns.
It is significant in that it stands in contrast to the order and coloniality of the building, and demonstrates value in the now in weaving, which was not valued in Western art hierarchies.
Some of the work in the exhibition also represented a powerful expression of the political, and incorporated the humour of the weaver.
For example, the work of Gimuy artist Erica Muriata in her series of baskets titled Blue Banana Jawun, Caution Jawun, Handle With Care Jarwun, and Red Danger Jarwun – all made in 2025. The baskets also represent the carrying of memories, maybe some happy, and some sad or traumatic, along with generational stories.
Connection and community
The description of Aunty Roslind Sailor’s works explains that she cleans the baskets through water, which represent renewal after carrying burdens. This speaks to how she is utilising weaving as a form of healing, and transformation, and how her work connects to the other works in the exhibition, or in communities through the common stories. Her work offers communities a physical form of the healing, and renewal, along with the possibilities of transformation.
What Bronwyn Fredericks really liked about the exhibition was the way the work of the weavers was showcased as a living and evolving practice rather than as static objects for decoration or a specific purpose. She was also taken with the basket which collected messages from the visitors about and for the world, and the future. Moreover, how they, along with the woven artworks, linked the past and present, and their dreams and visions for the future.
What interested Angela Baeza about the exhibition was how it placed women at the centre of community life, knowledge sharing, and cultural connection. It took her back to her early memories of admiring her mamá weaving wherever she was, surrounded by colourful threads and knots. While weaving, she would share funny stories from the past. As the exhibition highlights, weaving can bring people together, heal, and connect.
While Woven Together: Undivided We Rise has finished now in Cairns, we are confident that some of the pieces will be shown again in other exhibitions, along with be held in collections.
We are grateful we had the opportunity to view, and we encourage others to think about visiting exhibitions of artists who weave as part of their artistic practice. They have much to teach us and assist us in understanding other ways of understanding the world, and healing and transformation, connection and community.
Author details
Professor Bronwyn Fredericks is an Indigenous woman from south-east Queensland, and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement) at The University of Queensland, a theme lead with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous Futures, and Chair of Croakey Health Media.
Dr Angela Baeza is a Diaguita Woman from the Chilean desert, educator, and a Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous Futures at The University of Queensland.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the arts and health; and the cultural determinants of health
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