KAI WASIKOWSKI

The Bees and the Ledger

The Bees and the Ledger explores themes of industry, migration and work through the portrayal of Wasikowski’s grandmother, Natalia Broadhurst, who migrated from Poland to Australia on a cargo ship in the 1970s. Despite having established a career in shipping and cargo logistics in Poland, Broadhurst was unable to apply her skills and knowledge in Australia upon arriving in Kamberri / Canberra. This is a common experience of migrant workers who—depending on their point of origin, gender and English fluency—grappled with Australia’s systemic xenophobia and were often unable to secure a job in their industry of trade. Wasikowski’s work consists of two facing installations. On one wall we find 47 square photographs carefully arranged in a grid-like composition, showing Broadhurst surrounded by objects that map aspects of her personal life and daily labour in Australia. On the opposite wall is a series of more vivid scenes, taken across Australia and Poland, that tell her story through significant places, people and situations. For his research, Wasikowski travelled to Poland with his grandmother to trace their family roots and visit the shipping company where she worked for several years managing the cargo ledgers for incoming and outgoing ships. As the project developed, they explored her inability to find work in Australia despite the promises of Australian settlement and her subsequent studies of law, psychology, building and architecture. Regardless, she built herself a small house and devoted the majority of her labor to growing food, keeping bees and caring for her family.

Kai Wasikowski was born in 1992. He currently lives and works on Gadigal Land / Sydney, Australia. His practice encompasses photography, video and sculpture. He often draws on his familial connection to landscape photography and environmental conservation as a point of departure for his work, with an interest in how colonial optics employs photography to obscure the social and political stratifications of land, resources, possession, and belonging.