Absences (2016-19)
This text on silk work comments on the long, exploitative history of outsider archivists, researchers and colonial agents seeking to own and control knowledges of Indigenous peoples around the world. It draws on a few key texts as reference points, the seminal work Decolonizing Methodologies by Māori cultural theorist Linda Tuhiwai Smith, the multilingual publication Langues de notre terre : Poèmes et récits autochtones du Québec | Languages of our land: Indigenous poems and stories from Québec, edited by Susan Ouriou, and the recent collection coconut milk by queer Sāmoan American scholar and artist Dan Taulapapa McMullin.
It particularly looks to Kulin Nation territory, the waterways Merri yaluk and Birrarung yaluk, and to witnessing Wurundjeri cultural renaissance. It is also a reflection textually and visually on the place of a diasporic Indigenous Sāmoan person living in Narrm / Birrarungga / Melbourne, literally navigating biik, country. This work was developed during my participation in the 2016 Indigenous visual + digital arts residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity which was supported by an RBC Emerging Artist Award.
Waterways: Asian Indigenous Relations in Contemporary Art
12 June-11 September 2019, EV Junction 2.789, Concordia University
Seeing Voices, curated by Hannah Mathews, Helen Hughes and Frances E Parker
Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) + National Exhibitions Touring Support (NETS) tour:
14 October–10 December 2017, Horsham Regional Art Gallery
1 March–2 April 2018, Mildura Arts Centre
28 April–23 June 2018, Cairns Regional Art Gallery
28 July–16 September 2018, Riddoch Art Gallery, Mt Gambier
15 December 2018–27 January 2019, Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania
16 February–7 April 2019, Bathurst Regional Gallery
The Unspoken Word, curated by Rahul Gudipudi, Curatorial Intensive South Asia Fellow 2018
5-10 December 2018, Khoj Studios, New Delhi
shadow sites, curated by Samantha McCulloch and Frances Wilkinson
1 April-22 May 2016, Next Wave Festival, Centre for Contemporary Photography + National Storage Collingwood