The photographs done in collaboration with Dr Jody Haines represent and tells our story as Aboriginal women, as a mother and two daughters, reflecting on the struggles and trauma we experienced. This allowed us to strengthen our connection and knowledge while also healing and being able to feel like free spirits again. How many scars did we have to justify out of fear? Being a part of the project has been a positive and healing experience for us, when we realised our words weren’t going to be used against us due to past experiences, we opened up in the space. By standing alongside powerful Blak women it has shown us to be unapologetically ourselves. People don’t understand how much chaos it took to become this soft and gentle. These pieces show the importance of connection to family whilst enduring the trauma, but showing it eventually fizzled out to calm. We are healing ourselves to be able to empower our future generations.

- Trish Williams, Mia Manderson and S. M.

Trish Williams, Mia Manderson and S.M. — Artists / Collaborative Artistic Image Direction
Trish and her daughters Mia and S. (palawa, lutruwita/Tasmania) have been involved in the Blak Women’s Healing project since 2021. Together, they were invited to participate as artists in the Blak Women’s Healing exhibition curated by Dr Paola Balla in 2025. For the exhibition, they created a body of work titled Journey, in which the artwork reflected the journey the women of the research took and imbued their own stories of healing from trauma and their hopes for the future into a series of bush-dyed and hand-printed banners.

Dr Jody Haines — Photomedia Artist / Collaborative Artistic Image Direction
Jody Haines (palawa) is a contemporary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne who combines elements of social practice, photomedia, and public art in her work. Her practice is rooted in Indigenous feminist known materialism, with her work being a reflection of the personal, forming a dialogue between the past and present, and between Country, body, and self. Through large-scale public art and projections, film and photography, sound and installations, Jody explores themes of identity, representation and the complexities of the female gaze within an ongoing colonial neo-capital context.

Jody has collaborated with local communities on various projects nationally and has received commissions from organisations such as Creative Victoria, Arts Centre Melbourne, Collide &Hickory Group, Horizon Festival and Women of The World. Her work has been featured in key exhibitions and awards nationally and is included in both public and private collections.