Biennale Delegates Program Participants

Yvette Dal Pozzo – ACT

Yvette Dal Pozzo is the Director of the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery. Prior to this role, Yvette was at the National Gallery of Australia, where she worked on major projects, including the two-part exhibition ‘Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now’ and was the editorial assistant and contributor of the corresponding publication titled ‘Know My Name’ (2020). She was also the coordinating editor of Roger Butler’s publication ‘Printed: images by Australian artists 1942-2020’ (2021).

In 2019, Yvette was selected as an Exhibition Attendant to facilitate the Australia Pavilion as part of the 58th Venice Biennale. She has held appointments in galleries, arts festivals, and universities. Yvette holds a Master of Art History and Curatorial Studies from the Australian National University and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree from the University of Melbourne.

Chrischona Schmidt – NT

Chrischona is an arts professional and researcher with a background in art history and social anthropology. She has worked with Central Australian Indigenous communities as a researcher and art centre manager since 2006. In 2018, as Manager at Ikuntji Artists, the business won the Australian Small Business Champion Awards in Indigenous Business. The art centre is now one of the most renowned fine art specialised Indigenous art centres in Australia.
Before that, she worked in research and different areas of the art market, including auction houses, galleries and museums in Australia and overseas.
Chrischona researches local art histories in Central Australia with a particular focus on women’s work. She wrote the first art history of an art movement without an art centre and co-organised the first conference on Indigenous jewellery. She engages actively with the academic discourse through her publications, conference attendance and as a co-organiser of the University of Queensland art history program field school.

Rebekah Raymond – NT

Rebekah Raymond is a proud Arabana, Mualgal, and Wuthathi woman, with further cultural connections which have been disrupted by the Stolen Generations. She grew up on Larrakia Country and Limilngan-Wulna Country. Rebekah holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney, with majors in Art History and Archaeology.

Rebekah has worked across state and national arts organisations and institutions, while also undertaking independent curatorial, editorial and research projects. Her curatorial practice centres community collaboration, language, archives, and intergenerational knowledge. She currently works as the Curator of Aboriginal Art and Material Culture at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT), located on Larrakia Country.

Aleshia Lonsdale – NSW

Aleshia Lonsdale is a Visual Artist, Arts Worker and Curator based in regional New South Wales (NSW). As a proud Wiradjuri woman from Mudgee in Central Western NSW, Lonsdale creates work using various materials, including natural and found objects that endeavour to give voice to First Nations peoples. She sees the arts as a vehicle for intergenerational cultural transmission and as a tool that allows the audience to view the world through a First Nations lens. With a strong grounding in Culture and Country, her works are influenced by the past, present and future experiences of First Nations Peoples with a particular focus on social, cultural, political and environmental issues.

Eddie Abd – NSW

Eddie Abd is an artist and arts worker living and working on unceded Darug and Gundungurra Lands. Eddie creates intricate, multilayered digital and textile works grounded in her lived experience while responding to a range of concerns from the social to the political and religious.

Her video and digital print works often feature self-referential composite characters inhabiting remixed spaces and engaging in heightened acts of identity performance. Eddie was awarded the 2021 Blake Prize (Emerging Artist) and shortlisted for the Create NSW 2021/2022 Visual Arts (Emerging) Fellowship.

Born in Lebanon in 1979, Eddie studied Fine Arts (Painting) at the Lebanese University. After moving to Australia in 2001, she completed a Bachelor of Digital Media at the University of New South Wales (COFA).

Jazz Money – NSW

Jazz Money is a poet and artist of Wiradjuri heritage, a fresh-water woman currently based on Gadigal land. Her practice is centred around the written word while producing works that encompass installation, digital, film and print. Jazz’s writing has been widely performed and published nationally and internationally.

Trained as a filmmaker and arts worker, Jazz specialises in storytelling, community collaboration and digital production, working with First Nations artists and communities to realise digital projects.

Jazz’s debut collection of poetry, ‘how to make a basket’, was released in September 2021 with University of Queensland Press.

Riana Head-Toussaint – NSW

Riana Head-Toussaint is an interdisciplinary disabled artist who uses a manual wheelchair for mobility. Her work often crosses traditional artform boundaries and exists in online and offline spaces. She employs performance, choreography, video/film, sound design, installation and audience activation to create works that interrogate entrenched systems, structures and ways of thinking; and advocate for social change. The enduring concerns across her works are agency, representation, the limits of empathy, and how these impact people across various marginalised intersections. Her work is deeply informed by her experiences as a disabled woman of Afro-Caribbean heritage and her training as a legal practitioner.

Riana’s practice also involves broader curatorial/space-making projects. She is the founder of Headquarters, a disability-led, digital space; centring and celebrating disabled creatives. Riana is also a qualified Solicitor and Access Consultant. She lives and works on the unceded lands of the Eora Nation.

Mandy Quadrio – QLD

Mandy Quadrio is an Indigenous Palawa artist connected to her maternal ancestral countries of Tebrakunna, north-east Tasmania and the Oyster Bay Nation of eastern Tasmania. Currently based in Meanjin (Brisbane), she works across sculpture, installation, photography and mixed media. She received a Doctorate in Visual Arts at Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, in 2021.

By reimagining cultural associations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous objects, Quadrio aims to draw attention to historical and contemporary cultural and political events that impact Australian Indigenous people. She works to expose holes and myths in Australian colonial histories

Quadrio has shown in numerous solo, and group shows around Australia, including the TarraWarra Biennial in Melbourne in 2021 and at Ace Open in Adelaide as part of Tarnanthi festival of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art 2021. Her work was permanently acquired by the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania, in 2021.

Ruha Fifita – QLD

Ruha Fifita (Tonga/New Zealand) is an interdisciplinary artis based in Brisbane. She is co-founder of Pacific art research collective, IVI, Griffith Asia Institute Industry Fellow, and Curatorial Assistant for Pacific Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art.

Her creative practice fosters collaboration, community engagement and connection with indigenous methods and materials to achieve social change. She holds a Bachelor of Creative Industries, and a post-graduate Certificate in Discourse and Social Transformation.

Ruha’s work has exhibited throughout the Pacific region in settings such as, the Mori Art Museum, Festival of Pacific Arts, the Dreaming Festival, Auckland Art Festival, Pataka Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Tjibaou Cultural Centre, UNSW Gallery, and Seoul Museum of Art.

Erin Davidson – SA

Erin Davidson holds the position of Project Manager at the Art Gallery of South Australia and is responsible for delivering two of the country’s major biennial programs celebrating contemporary art and artists, the Ramsay Art Prize and the Adelaide Biennial Australian Art. Over the last decade, she has worked with South Australian cultural institutions and organisations in various roles.

In 2021, she commenced lecturing in Business Practice for Artists and Designers at the University of South Australia. Her formal education includes Interior Design, Art History, Criticism and Conservation, and Museum and Curatorial Studies. Her professional experiences range from tutoring in interior design, working in engineering and design studios, and managing exhibitions and projects for arts and cultural organisations.

Rayleen Forester – SA

Rayleen Forester is an Adelaide based, independent curator and arts writer. She holds Graduate Diplomas in Art History (University of Adelaide) and Arts & Cultural Management (University of South Australia) and is a South Australian School of Art graduate.

Rayleen’s curatorial interests focus on cross-cultural engagement through contemporary and experimental art practices. She was awarded the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Travel Grant (2010) to collaborate with Japanese curator and Gallery Director Katsuya Ishida and the inaugural Curator Mentorship Initiative grant (2012) to work with international curator Cuauhtémoc Medina at the MANIFESTA biennale. She co-curated the Artists’ Week symposium in 2014 with Lars Bang Larsen (DEN) and Richard Grayson (UK). In 2016, she completed a residency at ICI New York curatorial hub program.

Rayleen writes for national publications and is a founding member of initiatives FELTspace and fine print magazine. In 2020 she was inaugural curator in residence at ACE Open, Adelaide, co-curating If the future is to be worth anything: 2020 Artist Survey with Artistic Director, Patrice Sharkey.

Sarra Tzijan – SA

Sarra Tzijan is an Indian/Australian artist, originally from Naarm, now living in Tarntanya. Tzijan makes functional, sculptural and wearable objects, playing with the intersections of art and craft, highlighting their limitations. She draws on her mixed heritage to unpack themes of belonging, cultural displacement and colonisation. Adopting a multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach, she encourages the influence of others in her work.

During early education, Tzijan focused on drawing and illustration. In 2014 she completed a degree in Communication Design (RMIT), refining her work on paper. In 2016 she completed an Advanced Diploma of Object and Jewellery Design (Melbourne Polytechnic) and began combining her illustrative aesthetic with three-dimensional objects. In 2018 she was selected to undertake an associateship at JamFactory in the metal studio where she’s currently a tenant.

Theia Connell – TAS

Theia Connell is an artist, curator and producer living on unceded Muwinina country in nipaluna/Hobart. Her professional practice has seen her working within festivals, museums, galleries and not-for-profit art spaces regularly for a decade. Theia works closely with contemporary artists to build exhibitions, live events and site-specific projects. Her practice is grounded in the value of collaboration and mutual support and in developing meaningful context for experimental art.

Recent roles include Co-founder and Co-director of Visual Bulk art space, member of the Artistic Directorate at Next Wave, Creative Associate at Dark Mofo, Creative Producer at Dark Mofo, and board member at CONSTANCE ARI. She has exhibited as an independent artist across Australia and internationally, including Incheon Art Platform (Seoul), Snehta (Athens), BUS Projects, Watch This Space ARI, Firstdraft, Kings ARI and more. Theia completed a BFA (Visual Art) at VCA in 2014, and a BA (Art History) at University of Melbourne in 2010.

Claire G. Coleman – VIC

Claire G. Coleman is a Noongar woman whose ancestral country is on the south coast of Western Australia.  Born in Perth, she has spent most of her life in Naarm (Melbourne).

Her debut novel Terra Nullius, published by Hachette in Australia and Small Beer in the US, won a black&write! Fellowship and a Norma K. Hemming Award and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize and the Aurealis Science Fiction Award, among others. The Old Lie (Hachette 2019) is her second novel.

Her art criticism has been published in Spectrum, Artlink and Art Collector, and in exhibition catalogues for NGV, AGSA, NGA, and others.  Her conceptual/video work, Refugium, won the Incinerator Art Award in 2021.

Lies Damned Lies: A Personal Exploration of the Impact of Colonisation, her first nonfiction book published in September 2021 by Ultimo Press.

Nikki Lam – VIC

Nikki Lam is an artist, curator and producer based in Naarm. Working primarily with moving images, her practice explores hybridity and memory through the contemplation on time, space and impermanence. Born in Hong Kong, her work deals with the complexity of migratory expressions. Nikki’s current research focuses on the artistic agency during cultural, social and political transitions, particularly within the context of moving image and screen cultures. With an expanded practice in writing, exhibition and festival making, she is interested in exploring anti-colonial methods in artistic and curatorial practice.

Nikki is the co-director of Hyphenated Projects and Hyphenated Biennial, and curator-at-large at The Substation. She was Artistic Director of Channels video art festival, alongside many hybrid roles in the arts including at ACMI, Next Wave and Footscray Community Arts Centre. Nikki is a current PhD (Art) candidate at RMIT University.

Sebastian Henry-Jones – VIC

Sebastian Henry-Jones is a curator led by an interest in writing, DIY thinking, and the exhibition format’s potential to cultivate strategies of collectivity, social responsibility, and tenderness. He looks to embody these ideals in his work by centring the needs, ideas, and requirements of those he works with. His practice is informed by striving for personal ethics with sincerity, generosity, honest communication, and learning at its core.

Seb has staged group exhibitions and independent projects in Sydney and interstate and co-founded Desire Lines and Emerson. Previously, he was an editor at Runway Journal and has held curatorial roles at The 22nd Biennale of Sydney and West Space.

Esther McDowell/Yabini Kickett – WA

Yabini Kickett (Esther McDowell) is a descendant of the Kickett and Hayden families of the Bibulmun/Noongar Nation. Having grown up with an artist and poet mother and a photographer and land conservationist father, her practice is heavily rooted in language, endemic plants, family, totemic relations and found objects from Country.

Yabini has exhibited as an independent artist across Australia, including at Art Gallery of Western Australia (2021), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2020), Cool Change Contemporary (2018) and more.

Gok-Lim Finch – WA

Gok-Lim is a writer and artist living on the unceded sovereign lands of the Whadjuk people of the Bibbulmun nation. In 2019, they were a Creative Research Fellow for the State Library of WA. From 2018 to 2020, they were the board secretary of Propel Youth Arts WA, and the Project Coordinator for Community Arts Network’s Lotterywest Story Street project. They are currently studying a PhD at the University of Western Australia on the history of the Christmas Island workers union and working as the Student Engagement Officer for Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery.

Rachel Ciesla – WA

Rachel Cieśla is the Lead Creative for the Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Boorloo. She is also a co-founder and co-editor of Heart of Hearts Press.