The Melbourne Art Fair returns to the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre in 2022 as a forum for contemporary art and ideas with new and iconic work from artists shaping the future of art in the region. Serving as the Fair’s thematic for 2022, ‘djeembana’ and ‘place’ will, together, through a contemporary art lens, addresses a sense of place in an increasingly unsustainable, globalised world. Physically, temporally, and psychically bound, our sense of place is mercurial by nature. It shifts, expands, and contracts, becoming a synthesis of all that has preceded and all that is yet to arrive. Between ‘place’ and ‘djeembana’ is a lacuna in language.

Direct translation fails. Djeembana, a word of the Boon Wurrung, is a place for community; a meeting point for the exchange of stories, rituals and knowledge.