At the edges of the visual culture of exile: a glimpse from South Australia

This paper draws on research with Aboriginal women of the Central Australian desert who are living in the metropolitan centre of Adelaide 2000 km south of their homelands. It explores the complex conjunction of trauma and pleasure in situations of exile and hones in on the vital role of digital visual mediation in the creative work of making oneself at home in foreign circumstances. In exile, memory and digitisation of images, sounds and interactions enable distinctive socialities and ways of relating to places to be stretched across space. Yet other images are encountered as sites of contested identification and coercive governance. Separation from kin and country is intensely felt but also made bearable when their images are held in close company. In exploring these unsettling circumstances the paper reflects upon the uneven terrain of visual culture and the evolving place of the digital visual in research concerned with transformations in what it is to be human.