Taloi Havini’s video work Tsomi wan-bel (win-win) is a meditation on systems of justice, through the representation of a traditional mediation ceremony in Northern Bougainville, the Autonomous Region of Bougainville.

Practiced across the Pacific, this customary approach to reconciliation and restorative justice brings victims and offenders together and is practiced alongside common law.

In Havini’s three-channel moving image work, audiences observe a ceremony that facilitates the admitting of offence or wrongdoing. We see, through the shared rituals, the necessity of all parties (mediator, victim and offender) to gather in expression of regret and to present offerings as a means of making amends. We see also the witnessing and celebration of this healing by the wider community, though the ceremony itself is never shown on screen.

2021 Adelaide//International catalogue essays by Gillian Brown, Rachel Donnelly, Max Delany, Stephen Muecke and Irene Watson.