And I think in my curating practice, I am trying to bring mostly young and emerging artists from different backgrounds, from especially smaller cities like Adelaide and Canberra, because the art scene can be quite white, and there is so much tokenism going on to tick the box. In this recent show, there were thirteen artists, brought together, and everyone was embracing their culture and questioning and talking. This hum made by so many voices is so beautiful. It turns into a new language. You look back and this gathering, this connection starts with a ‘hi’ and then things happen. I love it. I love bringing people together, and I curate these exhibitions out of necessity, because I feel like there’s not that much happening. That’s why TarraWarra was so special, because the curator, Dr Léuli Eshrāghi, being First Nations (Seumanutafa and Tautua Sāmoan), Cantonese and Persian, they know. You didn’t have to explain.
SU: There is this line that the poet Asiya Wadud wrote, ‘they say, if you peel back the fixed border, another world can radiate. But sometimes it is not within our ability to see that other world’. I wonder, if its edges and possibilities can be felt. To end, I’m wondering if you can speak to what this might feel like for you?
EA: To go back to the village I was born in; to feel that air, that landscape. That place in me; that window I described, to open it to a mountain and the apricot tree. There is a tradition, where each member of the family has a tree planted when they are born, so we all have a tree there. I think that’s like saying, ‘your roots are there’. And yet. So much good has happened through the circumstances that brought me here, in terms of here, I mean the souls I’ve met through this life.
