Jahkarli Romanis is a proud Pitta Pitta woman, emerging artist, researcher and curator based on Kulin Land. Raised on Wadawurrung Country in Torquay, Jahkarli moved to Naarm (Melbourne) to continue her tertiary studies in 2018. After completing an Honours in Photography degree at RMIT in 2020, she commenced a PhD at Monash in 2021 through the Wominjeka Djeembana Research Lab. Her work is inextricably intertwined with her identity as a Pitta Pitta woman and explores the complexities of her lived experience and the continuing negative impacts of colonisation in what is now known as Australia.
Jahkarli’s practice aims to subvert and disrupt colonial ways of thinking and image making. She utilises her research and artwork as tools for investigating biases encoded within imaging technologies. Through practice-led research, her PhD research examines how large corporations like Google Earth image place and how Indigenous Knowledges of place are not incorporated into such mapping technologies.