Anatomy of a Dream House reflects on the womb as our first home, an otherworldly place of shelter, transformation and possibility, but also a safe space between worlds.
Drawing on ancient Mesopotamian architecture, fertility rituals and protective magic, the exhibition draws the body, the home and ancestry together. In the ‘central courtyard’, an embryonic cocoon hangs suspended within the outline of an ancient Mesopotamian floor plan. It is resting and transmuting within liminal waters, its mirrored surface reflects on the space in ripples of light, blurring the boundary between opposites.
Around the cocoon are shrines of protection, a remnant hearth and apotropaic figures drawn from the artist’s Assyrian-Iranian heritage. Remembered and reimagined, they carry traces of family, ritual, magic and inheritance. The work comes from Mavanie’s own experience as a queer, non-binary parent to be, they are recreating a blueprint, one that reflects their own unique reality.
Curated by Rachael Kiang.
This project is supported by Create NSW.
About the artists
Tia Mavanie is a Gadigal-based artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Melbourne. Their practice is informed by their Assyrian-Iranian heritage and their lived experience as queer, brown, and non-binary in Australia.
Working primarily across sculpture and spatial installation, Mavanie’s work explores cultural erasure, gender, identity, and belonging at the intersection of contemporary Western culture and Mesopotamian folklore.
They work with mixed media and found objects, using fire and water as elemental forces of destruction, renewal, and transformation. Their installations draw from their contemporary reality and influences, reflecting on how ancestral knowledge and cultural memory endure despite histories of erasure.