Bendigo Art Gallery Collection

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Mother Tongue is a video installation by acclaimed Australian artist Angelica Mesiti, offering a glimpse into the lives, sounds and creative expression of diverse communities across the city of Aarhus, Denmark. Commissioned for the European Capital of Culture Aarhus in 2017, this cinematic work draws on the Danish tradition of communal singing and its symbolic demonstration of togetherness. In a poetic and intimate composition resembling a musical score, Mother Tongue brings into conversation contrasting environments and distinct cultural expressions of music, dance and song to reflect on place, belonging and identity and how contemporary communities find ways to connect and live together in the daily rhythms of discord and harmony. 

About the artist:
Angelica Mesiti (b. 1976, Sydney) lives and works in Paris, France. Her large-scale video and sound works are full of humanity and employ the visual language of film to investigate the creative potential of performance as a mode of individual and collective storytelling. Mesiti has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, and in 2019 represented Australia at the 58th Venice Biennale.