Just Like Home

Video installation

Just Like Home is a video and sculptural installation that explores artist Lisa Hilli’s New Guinean and Australian heritage.

Lisa’s video documentary, Just Like Home, is a portrayal of her mother preparing I gir (e gee-rrra), a traditional culinary practice borne of the Tolais people of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. I gir literally means ‘to steam with hot stones’. Set in suburban Brisbane, Just Like Home positions this specific Tolais cooking tradition in a Western context, and reveals an interesting development: instead of using banana leaves, like in the traditional method, Lisa’s mother uses tin foil, thus adapting the recipe to suit her new adopted home and the resources at hand.

Drawing inspiration from this innovative technique is the second element in Lisa’s exhibition: a giant banana tree made of tin foil, a shining monument to the continuation and adaptation of this specific Tolais cooking tradition within Australia, and a celebration of cultures’ capacities to respond to shifting circumstances.

Just like Home is part of Next Wave’s Remote program of events focussing on screen culture and art.