Keynote Sana Balai | Carrying the Line: Memory, Land, and Women’s Cultural Practices in Bougainville

Aunty Sana Balai’s presentation examines how memory, place‑making, and imagination operate as interconnected cultural technologies throughout her life and work. A Bougainville-born curator, cultural custodian, and mentor, Aunty Sana bridges ancestral knowledge systems with contemporary creative expression, drawing deeply from the matrilineal epistemologies of Buka Island. Her practice highlights how women’s cultural traditions—especially those passed through the ha’tutu (second-born sister) lineage—sustain systems of governance, land stewardship, and ceremonial authority that have shaped Bougainville for generations.

Her co‑curatorship of Women’s Wealth at the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial (APT9) exemplifies this philosophy. The exhibition centred women as holders of economic, spiritual, and artistic power, presenting pottery, weaving, and other embodied practices as living archives of history and future possibility. Through this work, Aunty Sana illuminated the depth and resilience of women’s cultural labour across the Pacific.

Beyond institutional settings, Aunty Sana extends her methodology into the diaspora communities, including Pasifika communities mentoring young and emerging artists as they navigate displacement, cultural continuity, and creative sovereignty. Through relational guidance, studio visits, and intergenerational dialogue, she creates spaces where artists can reconnect with ancestral memory while imagining new forms of belonging. Her approach demonstrates that place‑making is not only geographic but also mnemonic and imaginative, reactivating kinship, story, and land-based knowledge across distance.

By weaving together Bougainville’s matrilineal knowledge systems, the collaborative ethos of Women’s Wealth, and her sustained mentorship of Pacific creatives, this presentation argues that Aunty Sana’s work offers a vital framework for understanding how Indigenous women’s cultural practices shape contemporary art, community resilience, and Pacific futures.