Zanny Begg
These Stories Will be Different

17 August—26 October 2024

A UNSW Galleries and Museums & Galleries of NSW touring exhibition. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.

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Zanny Begg Stories of Kannagi (still) 2019. Image courtesy of the artist.

If you think history is on your side, let me tell you women did not write these books. If they did, the stories would be different. – Christine de Pizan

Zanny Begg is an Australian artist and filmmaker interested in contested histories. These Stories Will Be Different brings together three of the artist's most significant video installations, including The City of Ladies (with Elise McLeod) 2017, The Beehive 2018, and Stories of Kannagi 2019. Between them, these works reimagine a medieval feminist utopia, probe the unsolved murder of a high-profile anti-gentrification campaigner and explore the connections between love, loss, and language in diasporic communities.

Begg’s videos tell stories, but they also challenge the politics of storytelling itself. Drawing on ancient literary traditions, non-linear timeframes, and computer-generated randomisation, Begg invites you to see the world differently: “All my work has been about ways of living and inhabiting the world … how we can live in the world differently. I am not sure if art alone can create a different world—but it can help us see how one could come into existence and the ways in which we can contribute to this process.”