‘Our languages and the places they come from are intimately intertwined,’ explains Jenna Lee, a first-time Wynne finalist. ‘This work seeks to take the misrepresentation of our words [as its substance] and very literally weave place and language back together into a truer form.’

Lee has woven a xanthorrhoea from many metres of handmade paper string, using pages from a decades-old dictionary of Aboriginal words and place names. It was her father who introduced the plant to Lee, teaching her about its various parts, which have been harvested and used by Aboriginal peoples since time immemorial. She also was taught that xanthorrhoeas were once derogatorily referred to as ‘black boys’.

While this term is rarely used today, it has informed how Lee views the evolving nature of language, and her desire to rework traces of colonialism into figurative forms rooted in cultural knowledge. ‘My ongoing body of work transforms these fraudulent books into a pyrophytic plant which thrives under deconstruction and reconstruction,’ she says.