The hyphen is a mark that both separates and connects, and opens into multiplicities of origins, interests, cultures, media, practices, fields of research, modes of creation. The hyphen is non-binary, multidimensional; a link, a gap, a joint, a hinge, a line, a break, an opening, a void.

The hyphen traverses an in-between space, opens up connections, embodies relations, exceeds boundaries. The contributions to the exhibition all deal in some way with an activation of this liminal quality: they investigate the ways in which art can be research and research can be art; they question how knowledge exists in the body and is embodied in objects, images and sounds; they recognise art and research as practices that occur in expanded fields of being, sensing and knowing with others.

The works in the exhibition engage with matters of power, representation and surveillance in the archive or through photographs; investigate memory, mythology and storytelling through film and ceramics; interrogate consequences and reverberations of displacement, decolonisation and precarious or marginalised labour practices. The artwork is seen here as an activator: a material rendering of research which in its own mode of subsistence poses new questions, suggests new trajectories and combinations, eludes habitual modes of being and knowing.

Hyphen assembles practices that incorporate video, photography, sound, installation, ceramics, digital media, performance, dance, music, workshops, talks.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the online journal Hyphen will be launched.