Danièle Hromek: Country, art and yarns 

As set out on the Djinjama website, Djinjama means to make, complete, produce or build something in Dhurga language, one of the languages from the South Coast of New South Wales. Djinjama is guided by some simple values based on the guidance of Elder Uncle Greg Simms. These values are: 

• Always show respect

• Acknowledge

• Never be greedy and always share

• Don’t take too much from the water or the bush

• Always listen

Large aspects of Danièle’s distilled understandings of Country have appeared in successive frameworks published by the office of the Government Architect NSW (GANSW). 

An excerpt from a March 2020 GANSW discussion paper, Designing With Country, reads: “‘Country’ (capital C) has a different meaning to the western understanding of the word ‘country’ (small c). The western experience of land is one of property, an appropriated ground given a monetary value, a landscape that is tamed, built upon, produced, owned. In the Aboriginal sense of the word, Country relates to the nation or cultural group and land that they/we belong to, yearn for, find healing from and will return to. However, Country means much more than land, it is their/ our place of origin in cultural, spiritual and literal terms. It includes not only land but also skies and waters”.

The excerpt, as edited, finishes with: “Country soars high into the atmosphere, deep into the planet crust and far into the oceans. Country incorporates both the tangible and the intangible, for instance, all the knowledges and cultural practices associated with land. People are part of Country, and their/our identity is derived in a large way in relation to Country. Their/our belonging, nurturing and reciprocal relationships come through our connection to Country. In this way Country is key to our health and wellbeing. So caring for Country is not only caring for land, it is caring for themselves/ ourselves (Hromek 2019). Country holds everything including spaces and places. Spaces and places, even those in urban centres, are thus full of Country (Hromek 2018), and therefore need appropriate cultural care to ensure healthy landscapes”. 

UrbanismNZ/ UDF asked Danièle about the pace of growth in understandings about Country. She says it is “ a learning, unlearning and relearning process and I can see the industry around me generally really trying to do and be better.

“I know just four years ago when I finished my PhD, few knew what Country was. Many did not see the relevance, some did not care. This has changed and I’m very grateful to all those pushing to better themselves”.

Danièle holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Design), and Bachelor of Design (Interior Spatial Design, Performance major). On the doctorate she comments “I didn't know I was the first person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent to finish the doctorate I studied for until it was clear there was nobody to examine my work, and nobody to look to as a mentor already in the industry. There is also that continuing problem for women in our industry that we are under-represented still in the highest levels”.

After completing her studies Danièle hadn’t expected it would then lead so directly to “laying new ground for those to come”.

“I knew I had a great methodology – how could it not when it comes from my Ancestors? But I didn't realise we would have to rely on it so heavily, to push a new path, to train up the industry around us in every project, and across so many aspects”.

Public art has been a feature of Danièle’s work, including artworks with her mother Robyn, a school counsellor and lecturer, and sister Siân, who works in land management. 

Together they drew on ancient techniques to create fishing nets that recast their ancestors back into the landscape, breaking down urban grids through a filter of culture. The work was created in response to a 2019 Design Canberra theme ‘Utopia’, and raised the question that what may be utopic for one, could be dystopic to another.

The completed installation work, Defying the Grid, is described in the gallery catalogue entry as a response to how architectural grids cut across the fluid lines of ancestral Country and the nebulous boundaries of Aboriginal nations.

Danièle says she has had “very little time for public art lately, or even speculative projects”. 

“The work with Djinjama is mainly around real projects trying to solve massive spatial problems with culture and Country as guide. Art is part of our work, but in our process it comes right at the end of the process and is not the main response, but the chocolate on the top of the cappuccino”.

A more recent passion, commencing from 2021, are the series of yarns that Danièle has convened online with Sarah Lynn Rees in a collaboration on Parlour called Deadly Djuirumin Yarns. 

“Sarah and I started these yarns to answer challenges we were experiencing relating to exclusion, cultural unsafety, cultural load, and the lack of women's voices being represented. We have an aspiration to elevate qualified First Nations’ women's voices in our space and I think the Deadly Djurumin Yarns are starting to do this,” says Danièle.

“We do enjoy them as it is a rare chance to be able to speak freely in a mode that we created ourselves, even if that is a virtual space. We figure if we can share about our experiences directly from our own voices perhaps this will help our industry improve around us”. 

Titles for the yarns include: Indigenous-led social change: embedding Country; If not here, where?; Lipstick on a wombat; Counter-mapping with Country; Bringing Country into the Centre of the Colonial City; Stripping the colonial veneer; Walking the talk; and Busting the Facade.

Danièle: “One of the concerns we have is that the industry has reduced Designing with Country to just another discipline in the list of sub-consultants on a project, whereas we see it as having so much more potential and opportunity to act as a methodology and approach to the WHOLE project – and even profession.

“At its worst what results is reduced to an artwork in a corner on the site, or a yarning circle. But at its best it could be a whole new way of seeing, being in and designing spaces that is unique to the continent now called Australia”. 

Danièle Hromek is setting that path. 

___________

Recommended reading: Respectful Authorship and Design.

Recommended listening:  ABC - Living with Country