Climate of Violence II: Lamentum
Arianna Nixon & Amy Sargeant
7 February – 15 March 2025
Image by and courtesy of the artists.
Climate of Violence: Lamentum is the latest ongoing collaborative series of work by Arianna Nixon and Amy Sargeant.
The dust has barely settled. A sacred tether becomes strained and defiled. Screams become whispers in the fog of war & the breath of a coming storm runs down your neck.The exhibition is a creation of work that critically engages with the pervasive climate of violence directed towards trans communities. In 2025, trans individuals face an alarming surge in discrimination and legislative aggression. Through their art and activism, Nixon and Sargeant confront these challenges, leveraging the transformative potential of contemporary visual art to resist and respond to such oppression.
For this series, the bell tower at Outer Space becomes a site of performance, introspection, and resonance. This installation, with its monumental presence, speaks to the silencing and erasure of transfeminine voices. In mainstream art and media, the experiences of trans individuals—particularly transfeminine ones—are frequently infantilised, misrepresented, or appropriated without creating genuine opportunities for self-expression. This project directly challenges these tendencies, reclaiming artistic spaces to amplify authentic voices from within the trans community.
By reshaping the bell tower into a focus of reflection and power, Nixon and Sargeant offer a counter-narrative. Their work seeks not only to articulate the realities of trans existence but also to foster a platform for empowerment, resilience, and collective agency in the face of ongoing systemic violence.
Arianna Nixon (she/her)
Amy Sargeant (she/her)
Images courtesy of the artists.
Arianna Nixon (she/her) employs a dialectical materialist approach to surrealism, creating performance & installation-based artwork utilising proprietary analog video techniques. Her art exists in context with the ongoing oppression of transgender communities, and is motivated by her personal experiences as a trans activist in Magan-djin. She continues to explore her arts practice, delving into new layers of graphic distortion and visual dissonance.
@ariannanixon.art
Amy Sargeant (she/her) is a Magan-djin (Brisbane) based visual artist, musician and trans justice advocate. Through installations of sculpture, audio, video and performance Amy’s work responds to her experiences as a trans woman and the climate of violence she experiences by reframing the elements of political spectacle. Amy deploys the Situationist method of detournement to destabilise motifs from mainstream politics, activist iconography, symbols and visual cultures.
@amysargeant.art
Climate of Violence: Lamentum
By Arianna Nixon & Amy Sargeant
7 February – 15 March 2025Outer Space
Open Wednesday to Saturday, 10am–5pm
420 Brunswick Street,
Judith Wright Arts Centre,
Fortitude Valley, QLD
Exhibition Text
first, there is pink can you see it yet?
Gathered are we, the witnesses, to an outpouring of grief. Shoulder to shoulder we watch the summoning of anger — something righteous and long silenced — borne from continuous exclusion and irrevocable loss. We are implored to look upon a facet of the transfeminine experience, to cast our gaze over something true, to glimpse its tangible weight, its heaviness, and its hurt.
Public Programs
Experimental Artist Talk
6 - 8PM
Thursday 6 March 2025
Join us for an experimental artist talk by Arianna Nixon and Amy Sargeant that will explore the themes of their exhibition Climate of Violence II: Lamentum through performance, sound and vision.