Unsettling Certainties: Emotions Exhibited.
This online exhibition supports the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Society for the History of Emotions and explores the theme of Unsettling Certainties through a selection of artworks, objects and historical texts from the University of Adelaide’s collection.
Unsettling Certainties: Emotions Exhibited investigates the embodied experience of emotion and invites you to consider the shifts which occur when certainties are unsettled or when certainties unsettle.
To live in uncertain times is to consider the possibilities of past, present and future anew. What was known is reopened for question and the futures built on such knowing becomes a pressing concern. Foundations are shaken, people moved. This exhibition uses emotion as an access point to exploring how people have embodied experiences of historical change and transformation, and how they used feeling to respond to unsettlings and to affirm certainties.
A collection of works from the University of Adelaide’s rare books, manuscripts and art collections will be on display on Level 1 of the Barr Smith Library from the 29th November.
Curated by Lydia Yeomans, Rachel Fisher, Amy Dale, Katie Barclay and Vesna Drapac. With thanks to the organising committee for the Fourth Biennial Conference of the History of Emotions; University of Adelaide Library; Department of Classical and Historical Studies and Faculty of ABLE, University of Adelaide.
Click on the themes below to get a taste of the exhibition.
Certain Embodiments
Emotions are embodied, experienced as sensations, feelings, imaginaries, a rapidity of pulse. As the materialisation of meaning in the body, emotions are shaped by our life experience and the surrounding environment.
This connection between the body and emotion has long served as inspiration across cultures. From hearts, to brains, to livers, body parts have become symbols that carry multiple meanings, help us make sense of the world and imagine new ways of living.
Settling Bodies
This selection of works draws inspiration from mythological Australian frontier narratives to highlight the emotional legacies of colonisation. Considering these foundational narratives though an emotions framework can reveal the structures that legitimise settler-colonial power and the emotions that arise from systematic violent dispossession and attempts to resettle stolen land.
Disturbing Worlds
The advent of war inevitably elicits intensified emotions as the state and its opponents advocate their ideology and citizens absorb and respond to the collateral damage. The embodied experiences that stem from political upheaval have the power to ignite collective emotion, incite rebellion and inspire individual expression.
Grounding Feelings
Place and landscape ground us, orientating our worlds and shaping our affective connections. For many communities, attachment to land and place was a core feature of spiritual and cultural identity; almost all communities recognise particular features of the environment as ‘sacred’, whether they refer to it in religious or scientific terms.
Histories of Emotion 