The Family and The Zombie
Columbus Museum of Art
Located in Upper Level Atrium, Mary and Bob Kidder Video Space
On view now
Admission Information
The Family and The Zombie is included with the cost of general admission.
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Exhibition Description
The Family and The Zombie mixes tropes of science fiction, horror, and documentary filmmaking to tell the story of a family of Indigenous Australians living in the aftermath of today’s ecological crisis. They look toward ancestral knowledge and lifeways to find a way forward in the wake of colonial violence and today’s resource extraction.
The Karrabing Film Collective is a multi-generational group of more than fifty Indigenous collaborators working in Western Australia. They use experimental film practices to address environmental destruction, cultural erasure, and Indigenous survival. Their surreal narratives speculate on futures that could disrupt the entrenched structures of colonial power.
Elizabeth Povinelli is a long-time collective member and its only non-Indigenous member. She appears as the titular “zombie” in this film. A professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Povinelli’s written work inspires the artist Sarah Rosalena, who was the subject of an exhibition at The Pizzuti in 2023–2024. Povinelli contributed an essay to the CMA’s catalog on Rosalena’s work, “Summoning the Ancestors: The Relational Science of Sarah Rosalena’s Anti-Colonial Aesthetics.” This exhibition of Karrabing Film Collective’s film is part of CMA programming inspired by Rosalena’s exhibition.
Karrabing Film Collective, The Family and the Zombie, 2021, Digital Video, 29:23. Courtesy of the Karrabing Film Collective
