#18 Leuli

I’m a multilingual artist, curator, researcher, and arts manager based here in Kulin Biik/Melbourne. I am a feminist, queer, Samoan Persian Australian. My curatorial and writing practice is centred on the research, critical development and representation of transnational cultural memory/history and cultural practices encompassing art and design. My practice within painting, and recently printmaking references family histories, spirituality, cultural memory, and connection to place. Recent works investigate narratives embedded in sites of cultural memory and erasure in Oceania and Iranzamin.

My current research investigates the possibility of transnational rites derived from customary mourning practices, activating sacred sites, knowledge and objects holding memorialised narrative spaces and mana. I’m particularly interested in the placemaking involved in the expression of fluid being, sexuality, and spirituality as a relational framework and context for contemporary Oceanian and Middle Eastern aesthetics.

I think it would be interesting to photograph me in my bed in my Westgarth share house dressed as I am at home, in an ‘i.e., lavalava (Samoan sarong), t-shirt, necklace or two next to the window, with a few Yolngu dilly bags and posters on the back wall. The point is to subtly convey the fact that marriage equality will be a diverse experience, as all LGBTIQ peoples are too. It’s not simply representation, but also portraying intersectional Australian experience.