Connection to land and cultural custom play an important role in this year's Biennale of Sydney, an international festival of contemporary art.

Rīvus, the featured program in 2022, explores the use of waterways in traditional practice and belief systems with the inclusion of a number of works from First Nations artists.

Wirdjuri woman Hannah Donnelly is part this year's curatorium for the festival, acting as the producer of First Nations programs, information and cultural exchange.

Donnelly said inclusion of Indigenous artists was at the forefront of directors' minds when organising the program.

"It's inseparable" she said.

"These ideas of Indigenous knowledges, ancestral technologies, access to ancestral waters and the story of water in this country.

"For an artist or a collective, it's still connected to this knowledge."

Directors chose a proactive approach in involving Indigenous artists, allowing their works to influence the direction of the program rather than fitting them in thematically at the back end.

Yawuru artist Robert Andrew uses water as a tool for erosion in his contribution A Connective Reveal - Yinamirlgan Buru/water waking 2022.

It comments on erosion language, with water washing away abstract words taken from letters that have been lost over time.

"Its a colonising tool, to come in and overlay a language over a culture" Andrew said.

"It's happened with a lot of Indigneous language in Australia, you're losing that connection.

"You lose a lot of culture and knowledge systems held within that language."

Yawuru artist Robert Andrew's Biennale exhibition 'A Connective Reveal'

Other artists found inspiration in confronting past traumas to their people, navigating through negotiations with land owners and pastoralists to visit ancestral waterways for their work.

"A lot of the compositions come back to conflict," Donnelly said.

"We know rivers, creeks, waterholes were sights of colonial violence, and are continuing to be sights of restricted access for communities to their water."

This is the 23rd edition of the Sydney Biennale, the first taking place in 1973.

This year's Biennale showcases work from Australian and international Indigenous artists, allowing for parallels to be drawn from similar traditions and experience.

Taiwanese artist Aluaiy Kaumakan explores her people's displacement and removal from cultural land after a typhoon ripped through her community.

Kumakan is the first Paiwan artist, the Indigenous people of southern Taiwan, to take part in in the event.

The biennale is open until June 13 at several sights and galleries in the city.