Arini Byng
How we breathe

This is too much to hold
So, we hold it together

Grief is an honouring 

How we breathe brings together a body of work created by Arini Byng during her two-year studio residency at Gertrude. The residency began alongside a profound personal rupture: the sudden passing of her father and long-time artistic collaborator, Travis Byng.

Travis, a Black American man raised in Philadelphia, migrated to Australia in 1984 with Arini’s mother, Anna Byng. As a deeply formative presence in Arini’s life, Travis was more than a parent—he was her primary link to her Black American heritage and the lived cultural experience that shaped it. His death marked not only the loss of a beloved father and creative partner, but also left Arini feeling culturally orphaned, severed from a vital thread of identity and lineage.

Throughout her time at Gertrude, Arini has endeavoured to honour the studio’s purpose—creating, experimenting, and developing her practice. Yet, what unfolded was a process marked less by production than by mourning. Her time became a space to hold grief and navigate the shifting terrain of cultural identity in the wake of loss.

Known for her work in photography, video and performance that examines the social and political resonance of gesture, Arini found herself unable to continue within familiar modes. Instead, she turned to painting—seeking catharsis through abstraction. These new works are raw reflections of a psyche in flux. They resist fixed meaning, existing instead in a continual state of becoming. A state Arini too is in.

Also featured in the exhibition is How to Just Be, a performance originally developed for Performing Care, presented by Performance Review in early 2025. This is the first performance work Arini has made without Travis, who had been a critical sounding board throughout her performance practice, imbuing her with the confidence to speak to difficult socio-political issues in her work.

In his absence, Arini brought together an all-Black ensemble of collaborators—Jacob Coppedge (Philadelphia, USA), Peta Duncan (Mer Island, Torres Strait), and Amaara Raheem (Colombo, Sri Lanka)—each bringing different cultural lineages and varied experiences in movement and performance. Together, they developed a choreographic score through a series of workshops, embracing co-authorship as a means to process and explore. How to Just Be asks: What feels meaningful to express in a world shaped by absence? Through the interplay of language, movement, and relational dynamics, the work reveals how vulnerability, care, and identity surface through the body.

How we breathe is an exhibition about grief and creation, rupture and repair, and the fragile yet enduring ties that shape who we are. It stands in quiet defiance of finality, holding space for what begins when something ends.