Biological Exuberance
Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 2021
This was a collaborative project with Queensland Museum led by Chris Salter, Head of Cultures and Histories. The focus was to challenge heteronormative views of nature by highlighting diversity found in nature in relation to sexual orientation, romantic orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics. The project is named after the book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity written by biologist and researcher Bruce Bagemihl in 1999. The book evidences how diverse sexual orientation and gender expression is in more than 450 species. This work was part of Novak’s contribution to The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) in 2021 at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA).
Images courtesy Queensland Museum. Photography: Katie Bennett, Chloe Callistemon, Merinda Campbell, Marc Grimwade, Joe Ruckli, and Lee Wilkes.
The Rainbow Gene
Genomes are an organisms complete set of genetic instructions that allow it to grow and develop. There is still much to discover about genomes, genes, and chromosomes and why we are the way we are. The Rainbow Gene celebrates our biodiversity, the known, and the unknown.
The Modern Family
This intervention is installed in the Whale Mall where three humpback whales float in the air. The original creators identify these as a bull, cow, and young calf, however, this could be interpreted differently by the viewer. Humpback whale males and females look very similar to each other, making it very difficult to visually determine sex. Both have a genital slit on its underside and the relative location of this slit determines sex. For males the genital slit is located closer to the whales stomach. For females, the genital slit is closer to their tail flukes. The two larger whale sculptures don’t have slits, so they could be a male and female, male and male, or female and female. The family unit we see could be many configurations.
This intervention consists of a window work by Novak titled The Parent, The Parent, and The Child and an audio work titled Currents (Beauty in Ambiguity) developed in collaboration with artist Jase Ess.
The Parent, the Parent, and the Child
This work mirrors the three floating whales onto the glass window panels in the Whale Mall. Breaking the work into thirds, the left and right thirds represent the two parent figures and the middle third represents the child.
Currents (Beauty in Ambiguity)
This is a sound work developed by artist Jase Ess exploring the diversity, flow, and beauty of sex characteristics as found in nature. With reference to the difficulty in determining the sex of humpback whales as something beautiful, Ess recounts, merges, and celebrates their own experiences of ambiguity in gender identity through sound.
