Editorial | Natalie King
Every Heart Sings is an illustrated children’s storybook by artist Patricia Piccinini: ‘a project that talks about nature, family, evolution, care and wonder.’ The book accompanied her gigantic anthropomorphic hot air balloon sculptures Skywhale (2013) and Skywhalepapa (2020) with their pendulous mammary and ascending bond. Whether tethered or soaring in the sky, this couple have an expanded purview, floating above land to reach the heavens. As Piccinini urges us: ‘remember to look up’ to this monumental couple who sway in the wind. In addition, Piccinini’s generous and capacious title evokes the beat of every sentient being, human and non-human reminding us of interspecies confluence. Her title was the poetic overlay for the lost Kathmandu Triennale 2026, and subsequently the name of this current, special issue of Art + Australia.
Combined with the concept of Coexistence, kinship among all beings, peoples, cultures, ecologies, faiths, and thoughts, the Kathmandu Triennale hoped to inspire diverse ways of relating and living, of perceiving and making, both as a society and as individuals engaged in mutual responsibility. Searching for avenues to transcend boundaries and repair a precarious world, Coexistence sought a newfound intimacy amongst us all, a yearning for belonging that speaks to a global ethics of connection and coexistence, care and kinship. Despite being in abeyance, some of the two years of research towards the triennale has been collected in this special issue. Curatorial strands now appear as commissioned texts, interviews and articles. I regard them as equally important but each function in a different way.
Source: Art and Australia
