RMIT School of Art is thrilled to see so many staff, students and alumni featured in the NGV exhibition Melbourne Now.

Today we feature Lisa Waup.

Blak Design participant, artist and curator Lisa Waup is a mixed-cultural First Nations woman. Often drawing upon personal experiences, her multidisciplinary practice spans jewellery, experimental printmaking, photography, sculpture, textiles, fashion and weaving. Waup uses symbols, text and materials that connect her to family, Country and history, weaving stories from past, present and future into contemporary forms.

For Melbourne Now, Waup presents a new neckpiece and earrings, The hidden intersection, 2023. The work is a continuation of her ongoing series, Our Way, which re-imagines the ubiquitous road sign. Using various media, the series explores the power and peril of directional markers, a colonial imposition that the artist says can control, repress and disorientate First Nations people on their own land. These works reference the generations of Australian First Nations people who have been stolen, hidden and displaced since colonisation.

‘The reinvented sign directs the viewer back to where ancestors can be found, implying that First Nations people never were and never will be lost due to their cultural connection to the land’, Waup explains. Created from custom-made, reflective aluminium traffic signs, The hidden intersection imbues the object with new meanings. By altering the messaging of existing signage, Waup turns a symbol of oppression and restriction into a powerful statement of reclamation and sovereignty.

Read the latest RMIT School of Art Melbourne Now newsletter