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The Car That Carried Home, a new commission by Western Sydney artist Marian Abboud, brings her late father's 1964 Isuzu Bellett to Parramatta Lanes 2026 as a living archive of family, migration, and care.
Restored by Abboud's family, the car is transformed into an overflowing installation, with crates and boxes of fruit and vegetables spilling from the roof racks, echoing childhood trips to Flemington Markets when the Bellett was packed to bursting. The vehicle becomes transport, archive, kitchen, and table all at once.
Each night across the festival, a live performance developed with Abboud's sisters, cousins, and invited participants activates the installation through the tastes, smells, and gestures of her childhood. Washing, cutting, preserving, offering, and eating become acts of embodied memory.
An iteration of Sister +++++ Familial Formations III (Biennale of Sydney, 2026), the work asks what an ordinary family car can reveal about migration, fathers and daughters, and the care carried between generations.
Presenting the work in Parramatta brings it back to the streets, markets, and communities of Western Sydney that shaped it, returning the car to the place where its story began.
