Gabriela Renee
“The place I do not know is the place I am looking for ”

Reading the exhibition title for the first time at West Space—The place we do not know is the place we are looking for, curated by Laura Mclean and Suvani Suri—I felt an instantaneous connection. The words echoed in me, I was transported back to a memory, a vulnerability I had forgotten but which has sat with me as a shadow on my heart for my whole life. This shadow is a longing, a restlessness, an endless search for the place I do not know, for an anchor to tether a scattered identity.

Why does the word ‘place’ hold such profound weight? Is it because, as humans, we are all searching for something, somewhere? A sense of belonging? We are driven to find our place in the world. The search for location, for a sense of home, for a tethering to time—this search seems to define us.

Australia’s relationship to place is layered, complex and painful. We have a colonised history and a migrant past. Most Australians experience a fractured sense of belonging to ‘place’ — a connection to the place in which they live and build families and communities. There is an added complexity to ties of heritage and lineage within mixed ethnicities in contemporary society.

As a nation it is important to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land. For First Nations Peoples, place is inextricably linked to identity, belonging, culture and land. Connection to Country is deeply spiritual, intergenerational, preserving culture, history and community and transcends beyond the physical landscape.

I reflect on my place every single day.

Over the past few years, my artistic practice has been deeply rooted in delving into my heritage. And yet, I find myself adrift, unable to fully grasp it. There is an unshakable feeling of diaspora within me, a pull for something that transcends mere ancestry. Why am I yearning for a ‘homeland’—to feel a connection to a place that is deeper than the branches of my ancestry— that feels both desperately tangible and tantalisingly out of reach?

The exhibition title is from an essay by philosopher and activist Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi:

This place we don’t know is the place we are looking for, in a social environment that has been impoverished by social precariousness, in a landscape that has been desertified. It is the place that will be able to warm the sensible sphere that has been deprived of the joy of singularity. It is the place of occupation, where movements are gathering…

Berardi’s vision of the “place we do not know” mirrors my own restless search for identity and belonging. He speaks of the alienation that permeates modern life, where the relentless forces of capitalism and technology have dulled our connection to both ourselves and one another. In my personal journey, I sense this same dislocation—a longing for a place that feels authentically mine, one that transcends the fragmented pieces of heritage that make up who I am.

For Berardi, the poetic is not simply a creative act, but a vital departure—a return to the body, to the rhythms of the self, to a deeper connection beyond the cold abstractions of society. His words stir something, urging us to seek not just a physical home, but a place where identity can be reimagined, where the individual and the collective intertwine in the warmth of shared understanding of who we are.

Maybe in some ways this will be my lasting path...maybe I’m not supposed to have a defined ‘place’ in the traditional sense. My identity, framed by my mixed heritage, is not connected to a singular origin or mapped lineage but, rather, a reimagined sense of self. Instead of shaping a fixed past and discovering something that is lost and reclaiming what is gone, I will take control of the narrative. I will collect the fragments, the memories, the whispers from my ancestry and my present — to forge meaning. A place built by intention, that holds the complexity of the in-betweenness and is allowed to simply exist. Maybe I don’t need to wait for belonging.

Maybe I can birth my own.

The place we do not know is the place we are looking for is presented by West Space and Liquid Architecture with Sarai-CSDS, supported by the Centre for Australia-India Relations Maitri Cultural Partnerships Program.