The Art Unit again offered a prize for student writing relating to UNSW's Art Collection, awarded at the annual UNSW Culture Awards. This opportunity was open to all current UNSW students, requiring submission of a short, original creative response to one of three specified works of art on the theme of Sydney from the UNSW Art Collection. Students from every faculty were encouraged to enter as this is a prize for all students interested in writing, and in art. Entries were submitted in prose, poetry, and critical essay.
The writer of the winning entry is awarded a $1,000 cash prize, as well as having their entry considered for publication by UNSW.
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The winner of the 2025 prize was announced at the 2025 UNSW Culture Awards on Thursday 6 November in the Sir John Clancy Auditorium. Congratulations to Ebony Casagrande for her work You Can Hand Me the Knife but I Won’t Cut the Cord.
Ebony is in her second year of a Bachelor of Media Bachelor of Arts, studying English and Art Theory & Art History.
Adjudication statement:
Katthy Cavaliere’s photographic work, nest 2, attracted sixteen of the thirty-five entries to this year’s Art Collection Writing Prize. Many were inventive, moving, and thoughtful, none more so than Ebony Casagrande’s deeply felt response, “You Can Hand Me the Knife but I Won’t Cut the Cord.”
Casagrande’s first-person narrator has a very modern voice. It is sophisticated, with winning flights of magical realism – we’re taken by it immediately and we remain engrossed throughout. The story unfolds from its initial observations about attachment and severance and then becomes an imaginative exploration of memory and loss. The narrator becomes the figure in Cavaliere’s photograph, naked on the beach, a daughter who has lost her mother and now carries her mother inside herself: “I’m holding onto something that wants to be given back. There’s infinite water in me.” There will be an infinite ebb and flow of grief, but not only that, for someone new has arrived on the scene:
“You’ve driven yourself to the ocean, didn’t mean to, but here you are. You turn your head and here I am: a girl upon the shore, stationed like child below teacher, legs crossed, hair scruffed, only this time I’m naked, this time the teacher is the sky, this time you’re wondering if you should call the police or rip your own clothes off and pray your mouth dry.”
What to do when we encounter someone else’s sorrow? Talk, be fragile together, allow each other’s silences; create art, as Katthy Cavaliere did; write fabulous pieces such as this one, by Ebony Casagrande. It is a worthy winner of the 2025 Prize.
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Ebony Casagrande You Can Hand Me the Knife but I Won’t Cut the Cord
Reattach. They use string for that. Needles. Gauze. Bit of blood and time; you’ll find everything will be as it once was if you’ve got blood and time. Can I tell you something? They’re lying through those pearls of theirs. Reattach. Why house such a useless word?
First lesson my mum taught me? Gotta leak a few tears if you want a big gulp of milk. Last lesson? When done is done, there’s no going back. Ripe to rot: you could talk to her ovaries about things like that. Well, you can’t anymore, but I think you knew that already.
Picture this, then: you’re driving that car of yours, the one with the bad wipers and the brakes that wheeze. The light goes green and a ute behind you honks twice. You don’t flinch but you feel like this city is attacking you, like the cement itself wants you gone.
Now, picture this: you used to visit the ocean every afternoon, even when the sky wept thunder and the birds refused to fly. One day, you told her you had to go find something somewhere else.
Ocean, what will happen if I don’t see you every day, your burning heart asked, the prologue to every good severance.
Dear heart, she replied, you will go on being you, and I will go on being an ocean.
That’s always been the truth; things unpart. All must be handed back, eventually.
A cold breeze slinks through your window. You’ve driven yourself to the ocean, didn’t mean to, but here you are. You turn your head and here I am: a girl upon the shore, stationed like child below teacher, legs crossed, hair scruffed, only this time I’m naked, this time the teacher is the sky, this time you’re wondering if you should call the police or rip your own clothes off and pray your mouth dry.
Let me tell you something about that, before we get on with it: people are forgetting what their mouths are for. Yours has fallen open a bit at the sight of a naked woman’s bare arse bundled softly amongst layers of clothes.
Articulate, another empty word. Forget it.
Mouths aren’t for sense, mouths are for eating fresh tomatoes and kissing after gelato and mouthing I’m sorry through windows and I love you across kitchens and accidentally swallowing the sea in the summer and thinking you might die for a second and laughing because you didn’t and drinking lots of tea and beer and broth when your throat hurts and they’re for smiling but so are your eyes and they’re for repeating names back and for spitting water at your brother and for getting sugar stuck in your molars so there’s something sweet to stumble over later. That’s all, actually, so close that gob of yours and come here now, before someone sees us.
You get out of the car and don’t lock it. I smell you before you’re all the way here. Basil, you must like green. You sit next to me but we don’t look at each other.
My tongue wakes for the first time in days. “Do you think umbilical cords can grow back?” I ask.
“I hope.” You say, and I know I can trust you.
“My mum gave me a plant last month but I think it’s going to die.”
“I can bury it for you.”
I turn to you now. “Do you think I’ll get enough time?”
You stay with the horizon. “My grandma says my first word was love, can you believe that?”
“What do I do with all of her keys?”
“I wish I could keep every name alive.”
“Can we plant a tree together, if we meet again?”
You face me now. “I’d like that.”
“Alright.” I say.
“Okay.” You say.
The mound of clothes reaches for the shore. I’m holding onto something that wants to be given back. There’s infinite water in me. Some of it comes out again, now. I get frightened by all the salt I contain. Your salt frightens you, too.
Here’s what I know: my mum won’t come back, covering myself in her clothes makes it better and worse. I will probably die from pain. I think I should have been born a horse. Love is a compromise, you can have it if you can stomach it. I hope my mum becomes a tree and I hope they don’t cut her down. This thing is a circle, I’m at the shit part. I don’t know if I’ll make it out. I’ll probably make it out.
You put a hand on mine. I let you. Your hair brushes like honey at your neck and you’ve never looked so fragile.
Daughters and pain, what can be done for it?
- written in response to Katthy Cavaliere’s work nest 2 (2010)
UNSW Art Collection