Equivalent Voids is a spoken-word poem video work that reflects on colonial perceptions of desert landscapes as equivalent voids. It draws on the stories of the Cameleers that migrated to Australia throughout the 19th and 20th centuries from across the Middle East and South Asia, and the lingering cultural presence of their camels in Australia.
Equivalent Voids was produced as an outcome for the University of Melbourne’s 2023 Miegunyah Student Project Awards and supported by the Russel and Mab Grimwade Miegunyah Fund.
The short film was exhibited at the University of Melbourne’s Grainger Museum, alongside two items from the Russel and Mab Grimwade Bequest: the watercolour painting Young Camels (1891) by Arthur Esam and Bactrian camel (19th Century), a Chinese yellow quartz sculpture.
Equivalent Voids was presented alongside a report and a public symposium at the Grainger Museum. The paper tracked the history of Cameleer migrations to Australia; exploring their religious and cultural presence in the interior of the continent; and studied the colonial imagination of the desert produced by colonial texts of the time.
Nasim Patel 