Canberra-based artist Tamara Henderson and Byron Bay-based artist Nell Pearson piece, Canberran Creatures is the only Australian artwork to be included in the 34th Sao Paolo Art Biennial - the second oldest biennial in the world.

The work is made up of 13 skeleton-like figures - all inspired by the capital in some way - that hook together to make four large figures.

"If you look between each sculpture, there is a system that offers a space to hook, the other end has a hook. And so, theoretically, that's an infinity system," Henderson says.

"So you should be able to hook and attach each one to another. They're hung in that order because we thought about them as a poem, and so each skeleton was to be a stanza [a group of lines in a poem]."

This year's biennial has the theme of "Though It's Dark, Still I Sing" - which is taken from a 1963 poem by Thiago de Mello from 1963. It is also a theme that speaks to the effects of COVID felt across the world.

Among the individual figures within Canberran Creatures is one titled COVID, which is covered in a map of Canberra and has vinyl enclosures filled with hand sanitiser and a COVID molecule created a Canberra Glassworks.

There is also one inspired by one of the city's more popular birds, a cockatoo.

"With the cockatoos specifically, that influence came from the exposure to this place - Canberra - as a new setting ... and that sound of the cockatoo, like everyone who lives here knows, it is quite a part of the fabric of the reality of Canberra," Henderson says.

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