Green Screen
Hannah Brontë: Umma’s Tongue–molten at 6000°
13 January–10 March 201813 Jan–10 Mar 2018
IMA Screening Room
#HannahBrontë
Her core is molten at 6000 degrees, the same temperature as walking on the sun. She has been dormant for thousands of years but now wakes to her womb being fracked, poisoned, and mined. Her broad frame unfurls from the earth, the future ancient is awake. Umma’s tongue is sharp as she slices through the polluted air, rapping 200,000 years of human debris.
—Hannah Brontë, 2017
Hannah Brontë’s recent video work Umma’s Tongue–molten at 6000° pairs the female black body with panoramic images of mining and natural destruction. As the artist describes it: “If mother earth were a rapper then this is her new music video”. The word umma, or mother, repeated by a cast of Indigenous female rappers calls up the matriarchal figure of nature in resistance to a dystopian landscape of human industry. Entwining the women’s words with Mother Nature’s tongue, Brontë voices her warning— ‘don’t make umma have to clap back’.
The IMA is pleased to present Umma’s Tongue–molten at 6000° as part of the 2018 Green Screen program. The work is on display in the IMA Screening Room, 13 January–10 March 2018 with a closing event 10 March, 5pm.
Hannah Brontë’s practice focuses on developing female and indigenous empowerment. Influenced by her love for rap and the power of spoken word, she explores language in popular culture, hip-hop, and slang. Brontë has exhibited nationally including at Channels Festival, Next Wave, Melbourne; Redlands Art Gallery, Cleveland; Wiloughboughy Art Centre, Sydney; Metro Arts, Brisbane; First Draft, Sydney; Proximity Arts Festival, Perth; St Pauls Gallery, Auckland; Griffith University Art Gallery, Brisbane; MCA Art Bar, Sydney; and Vivid, Sydney. Her background as a DJ has seen her run a series of all-female club nights titled FEMPRESS.
