Footscray community arts centre is coming back with a bang, officially opening three exhibitions this Saturday.
BOLD, Let’s Pull Things Apart Together and Hyphenated Biennial: The threads that hold us together will be opening to welcome the community back to the centre.
Nikki Lam is the curator behind Hyphenated Biennial, which is a multi-venue program presented not only in partnership with the Footscray community arts centre but also The Substation in Newport.
Working with her co-director, Lam Hyphenated Biennial was conceptualised after the two were discussing their experiences in the art world as Asian artists, where they often felt their work was pigeon-holed and imposed with a ‘singular Asian migrant narrative’.
“We started to talk about concepts [and] we realised that as settler migrants we also wanted to be able to address some of the issues and some of the conversations that were not previously discussed in the public, particularly in the art world, how Asian Australian artists position ourselves as kind of more marginalised communities while also not addressing were still operating on stolen land,” Lam said.
With the arts community being greatly affected by the pandemic, Lam said she was grateful to be back.
“Reopening has meant that we get to actually spend time with each other, and spending time with each other is how we connect and learn from each other as well.”
BOLD by Steven Tran, Let’s Pull Things Apart Together by Karima Baadilla and Hyphenated Biennial opens on Saturday December 4.
Details: footscrayarts.com/
Molly Magennis
