Unsettlement

Unsettlement, the catalogue accompanying the international group exhibition presented at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) in 2018, explored the ways power manifests through architecture and the built environments that shape contemporary life. Curated by Charlotte Day, Shelley McSpedden, and Elise Routledge, the exhibition brought together artists whose practices examine how political, economic, and colonial forces become embedded within physical space, infrastructure, and systems of representation.

Featuring artists including Dana Awartani, Monica Bonvicini, Aliansyah Caniago, Jasmina Cibic, Hiwa K, Jill Magid, Hayley Millar-Baker, Archie Moore, and Amie Siegel, the publication reflects on architecture not merely as backdrop, but as an active instrument through which authority, ideology, displacement, and social control are organised and maintained. Through installation, film, photography, sculpture, and performance, the participating works addressed both monumental and invisible structures of power — from state institutions and diplomatic architectures to urban redevelopment, colonial occupation, and systems of surveillance.

The exhibition approached “unsettlement” simultaneously as a contemporary condition and as a critical artistic strategy. At a moment marked by accelerated globalisation, mass urbanisation, forced migration, and growing economic inequality, the projects sought to destabilise architecture’s presumed neutrality by exposing the political forces and historical narratives embedded within built space. The works variously reclaimed, disrupted, fragmented, or reconfigured architectural forms in order to reveal the infrastructures of power shaping everyday life.

Particular emphasis was placed on the relationship between architecture and state power. Jasmina Cibic’s The Pavilionreflected on architecture’s role within the nation-building activities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, while Monica Bonvicini’s sculptural interventions physically dismantled and reassembled the gallery itself. Jill Magid’s The Barragán Archives examined questions of cultural ownership surrounding the legacy of Mexican architect Luis Barragán, and Amie Siegel’s Dynasty interrogated simulation, wealth, and corporate spectacle through fragments of Trump Tower marble. Other works addressed indigenous histories, colonial violence, urban displacement, and the erasure of traditional cultural practices through rapidly transforming environments.

Through essays, curatorial texts, and visual documentation, Unsettlement positions architecture as both material structure and ideological apparatus, foregrounding contemporary art’s capacity to challenge, unsettle, and reimagine the systems that organise political and social space.