Drop-by Community Hall and take a moment to complete lantern and dilly bag drawings with personal symbols to illuminate your identity, in an activity for all ages created by artist Jenna Lee.

For Melbourne Now, Jenna collaborated with Japanese lantern makers, Kojima Shōten, to create a series of paper lanterns shaped in the style of Gulumerridjin’ dilly bags. The artwork is called Balarr, a Gulumerridjin word that means to make light, to become light, and to dawn. It is completed with hand painted lines, words and symbols of light.

About Jenna Lee

Jenna Lee is a Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and Karajarri Saltwater woman with Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and Anglo-Australian ancestry. Lee’s practice builds on the foundation of her father’s teachings of culture and her mother’s teachings of papercraft. Represented by MARS Gallery in Melbourne, she has exhibited in Australia and internationally, including at the Pitt Rivers Museum in the United Kingdom, the Museum and Art Gallery Northern Territory, and Institute of Modern Art, QUT Art Gallery and Griffith University Art Gallery in Brisbane. Lee has been the recipient of the Wandjuk Marika 3D Memorial Award at the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards and the Australia Council’s Dreaming Award.