How might a secular, industrialized society reconceive its relationship to the Earth? This concern animated Angelica Mesiti’s latest multimedia project, The Rites of When (2024), commissioned for the underground Tank space of the Naala Badu building at Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Four years in the making, the seven-channel video installation fills the cavernous former oil bunker with moving images of dancers and a soundtrack of voices, music, and percussion. For more than 30 minutes, Mesiti takes audiences on a transhistorical journey through cultural ceremonies tied to the solar cycle.