Her Africa Is Real (H.A.I.R) employs contemporary methodologies of performance, literature, soundscape and installation to reimagine the “traditional” archive, and present our narratives and histories within the context of so called ‘Australia’.Her Africa Is Real (H.A.I.R) is an interdisciplinary collective. As southern African diaspora identities in an antipodean context, we come together to discuss and create works that challenge erasure and assert black representation, histories and narratives.The collective includes Roberta Rich, Naomi Velaphi and Sista Zai Zanda.

I am an Afrofuturistic Storyteller. I use podcast to share and archive herstory, my life seen through a sista's eye. With my roots in Zimbabwe, I now live on stolen and unceded Blak lands in "Australia" where I write and share these stories. Every podcast season, I invite you to listen and journal along with me as I set of on the lifelong journey to decolonise my mind and way of being. Each season revolves around a specific poem, a theme and a question. The poem for this season is called "The Conversation Is Always The Same" or "For Visionaries And Raindancers". The theme is #AfricaSpeaksBack and the corresponding question that guides my storytelling and interviews with various folks is "What Does It Mean To Be African In The 21st Century?" As a migrant living in a world that holds such firm ideas about "Africa" and "Africans" while consuming so much African culture, I often wonder what would happen if Africans themselves interrupted the narrative. Who would we all be then - especially the folks who drive the production of the dominant narrative about Africa and Africans. The poem that informs this entire series sits at the heart of this exploration of identity and self-determination. I'd say more but then you wouldn't listen to the podcast. May I invite you to make yourself a hot drink, grab your journal and get comfy. It's storytime!

Born on Wathaurong Country (Geelong, Australia 1988), Roberta Joy Rich is a multi-disciplinary artist also working as an educator and curator. Often drawing upon her lived experiences as a diaspora Southern African 'Cape' woman with Afro-Asian lineages, Roberta utilises language, text, video, archives, photo-media, satire and storytelling as platforms to interrogate constructs of race, gender, imperialism, Western singularity and notions of authenticity. With a focus on communal knowledge systems, alterity, socio-political histories, the environment and popular culture, much of her installation and mixed media projects explore resilience, power, memory, belonging and truth-telling. She is interested in critical fabulation and anarchiving as processes for unearthing silenced and emergent narratives, and the possibilities they conjure. Roberta's work aims to deconstruct colonial modalities whilst proposing empowering sites of collective self-determination.