In its 62-year history, documenta has established a reputation as one of the most important recurrent international exhibitions dedicated to examining modern and contemporary art. 

Opening this September in its 14th interval, documenta features a variety of creative mediums, including but not limited to, performance, sculpture, painting, film, photography, installation, research, and text-based and audio works. In terms of providing a world-recognized platform for artists to experiment with new practices across art, science, literature, aesthetics, politics, and ecology, Documenta is unsurpassed.

As part of the 2017 Parliament of Bodies documenta14 public programs, held in Athens this September, UNSW Art & Design Honorary Associate Professor Bonita Ely will be presenting one of the 34 Exercises of Freedom workshops: #23 Interior Effects as an Outcome of War. 

Ely’s open-social workshop explores the ongoing, inter-generational effects of undiagnosed, untreated 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 World War II and presents the tragic effects of undiagnosed PTSD as the focus of her artistic work.

“Whenever people suffer the violence of war,” says Ely about the theme of her work and the content of the workshop, “when traumatized soldiers return home, when refugees and migrants worldwide flee from war-torn countries to seek safety, generation after generation may be exposed indirectly and directly to the traumatizing effects of war through epigenetic transfer, acute anxiety, insecurities, and family violence.”

Register for the workshop here.

Bonita Ely is an Australian artist. Her interdisciplinary artworks typically address environmental and socio-political issues, inventing fantasy personas, insightful mythologies, and narratives to address the causes and effects of environmental destruction, as well as social inequities.