Can the arts and humanities offer a lens for exploring division?

Over millennia, art and storytelling have made trouble. Creative complexity, where many ideas are true and contradictory at the same time, is what makes arts and stories so important for understanding worlds past and present. Strong creative expression is often perceived as divisive or too contentious. But an alternative way of thinking about art is to understand artistic provocation as contributing to social good.

‘Don’t Trust the Arts’ hosted by the Campus Collaboration at the Sydney Policy Lab, was part of event series titled ‘We Can Talk About Hard Things’.

The Campus Collaboration began at the Sydney Policy Lab in 2024 to work with students and staff to understand the wealth of existing thinking and practices that go to the heart of how to invigorate campus life and foster a culture of thoughtful disagreement.

“One of the key objectives of the Campus Collaboration is to support the University and its communities to engage constructively with difference, diversity and complexity, without collapsing into division and polarisation,” says Associate Professor Sophie Gee, who leads the Collaboration with Professor Danielle Celermajer and Dr Kate Harrison Brennan.

‘Don’t Trust the Arts’ showcased a panel discussion attended by academic and professional staff from all over the University. Panellists explored how the arts can enable us to understand divisive experiences and asked whether arts and humanities may allow us to build greater collective trust collective in the role of universities.

The event was opened by Lile Khajavi is an interdisciplinary artist from Georgia, currently undertaking an Honours degree at the Sydney College of the Arts. Her practice involves experimenting with the ideas of actuality and potentiality within and outside the framework of absurdism.

Understanding how and why the arts play tricks on human understanding — and why that’s the very essence of what art and story is supposed to do — is at the heart of understanding our own responses to, and responsibility for, our contemporary social, political and environmental crises.

Moderated by Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, Associate Professor Sophie Gee, the panel included Michael Dagostino, Director of Chau Chak Wing and Seymour Centre; Professor Julia Kindt, Associate Editor of Public Humanities; Professor Jakelin Troy, Director Indigenous Research and Co-Editor of Everywhen: Australia and the Language of Deep History, and Dr Niro Kandasamy, historian of refugee resettlement and Co-Director (with Michael McDonnell) of the Powerful Stories Program.

The panellists’ reflections led to an inclusive discussion about trust — what it is and what it isn’t — prompted by the question, can we build trust without first acknowledging experiences of mistrust?

Michael Dagostino talked about the hard conversations around an exhibition in Western Sydney, where Governor Macquarie was described as ordering the “murder” of First Nations people. Professor Jakelyn Troy talked about the creative potency of corroboree. Dr Niro Kandamasy described watching a much-admired play about the war in Sri Lanka, only to find that she couldn’t recognise the story of Tamil experience that the playwright was telling. Professor Julia Kindt highlighted the lack of trust at a societal level and reminded us that art can shine a light on the complexities of trust.

“When we idealise the arts, by believing they should be uplifting, benign or outside the realm of politics, or when we demonise the arts by imposing bans and censorship, we are effectively saying the same thing: stories ought to be simple. Messages should be good or bad. This is exactly what great art is not”, says Associate Professor Gee.