Leila Galloway

Changing Ideas Award
"Hebaska" makes visible the invisible forces that govern how bodies are seen, felt, and permitted to exist within space. A site-responsive installation of suspended translucent panels, it shifts with air, light, and movement, exposing how bodies are formed, misread, and erased within their environments. It rejects fixed form in favour of instability, permeability, and continuous transformation.
At its core, the work confronts visibility as a function of power. The material reveals and obscures, tracing the conditions under which individuals—particularly women and other marginalised groups—are made visible, misrecognised, or rendered absent within social structures. Presence is not given but contingent and unstable.
The installation operates through shared sensory experience. As viewers move through it, shifts in air and light generate a pre-linguistic awareness. Perception becomes collective rather than individual—something inhabited rather than possessed—producing connection through uncertainty.
A green atmospheric field structures the work as condition rather than image. Drawing on forest environments, where light and density alter bodily perception, it references photosynthesis—light absorbed and transformed—to position colour as a regulating force that modulates attention, calm, and embodiment.
Activated through a women-only spoken word gathering, the work functioned as a partially concealed space for voice, reducing the pressure of visibility and enabling less-heard voices to emerge with greater confidence.
Engaging urgent social concerns—including gender inequality, environmental precarity, and the unequal conditions structuring visibility, voice, and agency—"Hebaska" exposes the infrastructures that govern how space is occupied, revealing perception itself as produced through systems of power.