Yuriyal Eric Bridgeman – SUNA (Middle Ground), 2020-2026

Yuriyal Eric Bridgeman’s roundhouse is organised around a shared centre, with painted kuman – shields associated with defence and tribal histories – suspended in time. The structure reworks the hausman, a traditional Highlands roundhouse built for Bridgeman by members of his Yuri family in Papua New Guinea. That house became home to Haus Yuriyal, the collective he founded with relatives and through which he continues learning his family’s cultural practices. In Yuri language, suna means “middle ground”: a protected place set back from conflict, where people gather to speak and work. Cultural recovery takes place through building and painting, teaching and learning, as knowledge passes across generations. Brought to Lyon, the house extends this practice of hospitality and negotiation into a new setting. It hosts performances and conversations shaped by those who use the space. Its occupation ebbs and flows with the people who gather there.

Yuriyal Eric Bridgeman develops a practice closely tied to his family and tribe, Yuri. Co-founder of the collective Haus Yuriyal, he operates there as both artist and facilitator. The kuman, derived from the masculine practices of his ancestry, become pictorial surfaces that combine personal and collective expressions, questioning the relationships among portraiture, social commentary and cultural continuity.

La Biennale de Lyon acknowledges the tribal Elders and Leaders of the Yuri tribe, the members of the Haus Yuriyal Arts Collective; Yuriyal’s mother Veronica Gikope, the Chancellor of University of Goroka, PNG – Dr Joe Sine Wemin; Aunty Sana Balai, Bougainville Elder and Mittelheuser Great Ocean Scholar; and Toya Momal Yal, Kerikane clan elder, Yuri tribe.

La Biennale de Lyon extends this acknowledgement to Yuriyal Eric Bridgeman, senior member of the Yopa Moya clan, of the Yuri tribe of Simbu Province in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, and lead artist of the Haus Yuriyal collective; as well as to Peter Dii Morua, senior member of the collective, and member of the Pilé Clan, of the Yuri tribe.