Artist Talk: HOLDING SPACE 2026 – Rituals of Reciprocity – Land and Water

Join us for an afternoon with project artists (Azarmidokht Elahi, Catherine Sarah Young, Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal & Kylie Colemane) in conversation with Vandana Ram (Curator) on First Nations, refugee, and culturally diverse understandings of land and water.

As part of CuriousWorks' HOLDING SPACE 2026 – Rituals of Reciprocity – Land and Water program, this artist panel is about sharings of cultural and creative ideas centred around mutual exchange, responsibility, and care. Artists will also give insight into traditional knowledge and ancestral practices, working interculturally and with communities, focussing on stewardship of our planet.

🗓️ 12:30-1:15pm. Sunday, 25th of October 2026

📍Chrissie Cotter Gallery. 31A Pidcock St, Camperdown NSW 2050. Find info about access here

✨ This artist talk is free however registrations are essential. Please register via this Humanitix webpage.

This free workshop is part of CuriousWorks' HOLDING SPACE 2026 – Rituals of Reciprocity – Land and Water program. HOLDING SPACE is funded by the NSW Government through the Multicultural NSW COMPACT Program. Our project collaborators are SSI’s Community Refugee Welcome Centre located at Callan Park, Lilyfield, and Community Partners Sydney Opera House. 

For any questions, please email CuriousWorks' HOLDING SPACE Curator Vandana Ram, at vandana@curiousworks.com.au.

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ARTIST BIOS:

Azarmidokht Elahi is an Iranian-Australian multidisciplinary artivist, educator, and community arts facilitator based in Sydney. She is the founder and creative director of HamAva Women’s Group, a community platform that brings women from diverse cultural backgrounds together through art, dialogue, and collaborative creativity.

With more than 25 solo exhibitions across Iran and Australia, Azarmidokht’s artistic practice explores themes of identity, migration, memory, gender, and human rights. Working across visual arts, installation, and participatory projects, her work creates spaces where personal narratives and collective histories can be expressed, witnessed, and shared.

Her practice is grounded in community engagement and socially responsive art. Through workshops, public programs, and collaborative projects, she works with culturally diverse communities, including migrants, refugees, and women navigating displacement and social change.

Azarmidokht’s work is deeply connected to ideas of belonging, reciprocity, and care. She is particularly interested in how artistic practices can connect people to land, memory, and each other while amplifying voices that are often unheard.

Alongside her artistic practice, she works as a community arts teacher with TAFE NSW, facilitating the Art and Connection course and creative programs that support cultural exchange, empowerment, and social connection.

Photo: Supplied

Dr. Catherine Sarah Young is a Filipino-Chinese interdisciplinary artist, designer, writer, and scholar. With a background in molecular biology, fine art, and interaction design, she cultivates an artscience practice by using scientific experimentation and molecular transformations in her art-making, often relating these to environmental and social issues. Catherine has an international profile, with numerous fellowships, exhibitions, and speaking engagements. She was one of ArtReview Asia’s Future Greats in 2018, a Thirteen Artist Awards recipient in the Philippines in 2021, was listed as one of the 10 Women Leading the Fight against Climate Change by Earth.org in 2024, and is an Obama Leader for Asia-Pacific. Her PhD dissertation is entitled, ‘The Ghost of Rain: Investigating Petrichor as Companion Molecules in the Critical Zones through the Arts’. She is currently a sessional academic in UNSW Sydney School of Art and Design where she mentors Master of Design students on their capstone projects framed around the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Photo: Supplied

Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal is a Javanese Australian director, choreographer, writer and Body–Mind Centering® somatic movement educator whose work traverses contemporary performance, dance theatre and interdisciplinary arts research. Her lineage bridges Australian convict-settler histories with the ceremonial and cosmological lineages of Yogyakarta’s Keraton and the Borobudur temple complex, grounding a practice that moves fluently across cultures, philosophies and embodied knowledge systems.

Internationally trained across the USA, Europe, Asia and Australia, Jade holds a Bachelor of Dance (Miami/NYC), a Master of Choreography (VCA), and completed a Darmasiswa Scholarship at Yogyakarta Arts University. Her rigorously articulated methodology integrates improvisation, somatic embodiment and physical dramaturgy, positioning the body as a site of memory, relation and insight. Working at the nexus of authorship, co-creation and interpretation, she develops intercultural works that are both structurally sophisticated and deeply rooted in lived, sensory intelligence.

Jade has collaborated with leading companies and independent artists including Ria Soemardjo, Kirk Page, Bebe Miller, BodyCartography Project, Chunky Move, Bangarra, Legs on the Wall, Hermes Ensemble and Marrugeku. These partnerships embed her practice within expansive networks of experimental and intercultural performance.

A committed contributor to First Nations partnerships, regional arts leadership, youth dance and community-driven initiatives, Jade plays a significant role in shaping contemporary Asian Australian performance discourse. Her work advances a vision of dance and interdisciplinary art that is inclusive, critically engaged and anchored in embodied, cross-cultural knowledge.

Photo: Kate Holmes

Kylie Colemane is a proud Barramadagal woman of the Darug speaking nation, with Wiradjuri connections.

Based on the Mornington Peninsula on Bunurong land for over a decade she has worked with schools, universities, community groups & corporate groups facilitating various workshops.

As a cultural educator, artist & ecotherapist she invites the use of nature elements to improve physical and mental health creating wellness. Creatively bringing nature, art & mindfulness together with a First Nations lens. Focusing on observing, being with & enjoying nature elements.

Currently Kylie is an Indigenous Industry Fellow based at Monash Peninsula campus creating educational resources based around native plants, bushfoods and adding to her published, co-authored papers based on intergenerational learning. Kylie is one of the cohort chosen for the Koorie Heritage Trust Blak Design 2025. Consults on Urban projects around plants & design, has completed public art installations featuring botanical illustrations on Darug country, Sydney. 

Vandana Ram brings deep experience in community-based arts practice and cultural development to CuriousWorks.

Vandana has been directly involved in the growth of community cultural development as a practice in Australia – helping to shape and advocate for it as an embedded practice for artists and communities. Specifically, she has over 20 years of expertise working in the arts for Western Sydney, most recently as the founding Director of Bankstown Arts Centre, as well as extensive experience in curation, policy, arts management, and public art, developing successful community partnerships along the way.

She is also a practising visual artist exploring migration, and colonisation as well as the histories and geographies of Western Sydney.