After Alondra Nelson's keynote - Henrietta Lacks in Text and Context - which provided a fascinating insight, and reminder, into racial biases that exists within medical settings, local artists were invited to respond to Nelson's presentation. The ceramic artist, Heidi McKenzie, gave a personalised account of her traumatic experience of enduring two decades of chronic pain as a result of fibromyalgia. She spoke of the extent her pain, or rather the invisibility of it, and how her racial hybridity have informed her practice.
Jeff Thomas spoke of his upsetting experience of discrimination at the hospital where he was being treated (or lack of) after a serious car accident due to negative stereotypical view of "Indian" (First Peoples) in the United States. The experience served as a catalyst to personally, and artistically, confront stereotypes of aboriginals by showing current perspectives of what he calls "urban Iroquoian" person through his photographs.
