Natalie Quan Yau Tso 左君悠

Natalie Quan Yau Tso 左君悠 is a Hong Kong-Australian artist who makes sculptures, installations and performances through embodied knowledge. She often activates intimate materials by performing with them and forming sculptures from their residues, suspending moments of liveness otherwise immaterial. She employs acts that expose bodily boundaries including hair-cutting, eating and peeling, which become a process for her to reclaim the warfare of cultural erasure and assimilation in Hong Kong and Australia. She aims to reveal slippages between the material and the corporeal to shake the boundaries between the personal and political. She currently lives and works across unceded Gadigal, Cammeraygal and Darug country.‘Bones is an attempt to make sense of what makes my body Chinese, or not, as a Hong Kong-Australian. I will develop a non-traditional ritual to connect with my ancestor by collecting saliva and sweat in the process of feeding myself General Tso’s chicken across this residency.’

Nadia Refaei

Nadia Refaei is an artist and curator based in nipaluna. Her multidisciplinary practice draws on both personal and broader histories to explore ideas around cultural dislocation and negotiation. Varied histories of familial migration have informed her interest in the relationships between migration, memory and mythology. Nadia uses installation, video and other media, as well as embodied practices like cooking and gardening, to examine these issues through the lenses of her overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, Arab- Muslim- and Greek- “Australian” identities. ‘At the moment I’m interested in informal and incidental modes of gathering and connection, and how culture and community forms in different neighbourhoods. I hope to spend my time in Naarm exploring these ideas and connecting with artists and community, sharing meals, and visiting some home gardens if I’m really lucky!’

Elyas Alavi

Elyas Alavi is an interdisciplinary artist and poet who works across painting, sculpture, performance and moving image. An Afghan-born Hazara, Alavi is interested in exploring trauma, memory, gender, sexuality, and social and political crises through his work. Alavi has exhibited nationally and internationally. He has published three poetry books in Afghanistan and Iran. Alavi’s work featured in a solo exhibition at ACE Open in 2019, the same year he received a prestigious Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship. Most recently Alavi exhibited at The Substation, Melbourne, as part of the Hyphenated Biennal 2021-22. He completed a Master of Visual Arts at the University of South Australia in 2016 and a Master of Fine Arts at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London, in 2020.‘During my residency I will work on a new body of work Cheshme-e Jaan (The spirit spring), including poetry and neon installation. As an extension to Hyphenated Biennial 2021-2022, this is part of my ongoing research into history of Cameleers in Australia. This new body of work will be exhibited at the TarraWarra Biennial 2023.’

Ma Ei

Ma Ei is an artist who works in photography and performance currently based in Melbourne. She was born in Dawei, Myanmar, and began her art practice in Yangon in 2002. She is particularly interested in the politics for women. She has showed her work widely including at the Asia Pacific Triennial in 2021, and she has been an artist-in-residence in Japan, Korea, India and The Netherlands.

Truc Truong

Truc Truong is an emerging artist living on Kaurna land (Adelaide), exploring variances between Eastern and Western thinking. Working with sculpture and installation, her work points to colonialism, exploring aspects of racism, hybridity and displacement, often through experiences and stories retold by her family.

​During her residency at Hyphenated Projects, she aims to build relationships with second-generation migrants in Melbourne’s west, which she hopes to enrich her own experience and practice. Her residency also coincides with Lunar New Year, which would contribute to her ongoing research into symbolism of festivities.

NEW WAYFINDERS

New Wayfinders is a community collective that serves as a platform for aspiring, emerging, and established Oceanic diaspora artists; creating opportunities, connections, workshops, and networks within Narrm and abroad. Exploring the concepts of Soli, Si’i/Fa’alavelave, Koha and Helpim Wantok, which are all broadly cultural practices of contribution, giving, donations, offering, presents or presentations, the group is working towards a project in visual arts, weaving practice, sound and performance.
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