This discussion will explore how artists engage with archives not only as repositories of history, but also as contested spaces that shape narratives, identities, and cultural memory.

Working in, with, and against the archive, the panelists each navigate questions of absence, bias, and power—seeking to uncover, disrupt, and reimagine what is preserved and what is erased. The conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A, inviting reflections and further provocations.

Archives are Hot! Artists in the Archive is a two-day program of workshops, talks and activations. This event is a collaboration between Next Wave and CAST.

Jacina Leong

Dr. Jacina Leong 梁玉明 is an artist-curator, educator and researcher whose practice engages with the intersections of community engagement, care ethics and curatorial inquiry. Working across cultural and educational spaces since 2008, her work considers how creative practices and organisations can respond to the converging crises of our time. https://jacinaleong.com/

Alexander Williams

Alexander Williams aka Pug is a Djlang born (un)disciplined artist living and working on unceded Wurundjeri Woiwurrung land in Naarm. Their work investigates the entangled precarities of contemporary waste through the ad-hoc, found object, sound sculptural installation focusing on decolonial frameworks explored by Max Loboiron in their book Pollution is Colonialism.

They are currently studying their BFA (Honours) at VCA. Pug graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Sculpture) from RMIT university in 2023 and completed artistic residences in Ireland, Vietnam and Italy in 2024.

Nataša Čordašić

Nataša Čordašić works with drawing, painting, video, installation, embodied and participatory practices, and performance. She experiments with materiality to interrogate social systems. Her art practice has evolved alongside her work as a professional trauma counsellor/advocate, deepening her understanding of the process of change.

Most recently, she responded to the call of a passionfruit vine. Together, they grew the Peace Centre, a backyard installation, and its outposts — several small gardens, test sites, that support their ongoing research. The collaborative relationship facilitates the creation of new generative systems. These are integrated into the community through informal encounters, conversations, and exhibitions.

Nataša's engagement with archives is also relational. She prioritises living knowledge reposited in the context of experience and available to us through our bodies and our social interactions.

Nataša's engagement with archives is also relational; she prioritises living knowledge that is embedded in experience and accessed through our bodies and in social interactions.

Fayen d'Evie

Fayen d'Evie is an artist, publisher, and academic, born in Malaysia, raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, and now living and working on unceded Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung lands, in Naarm-Melbourne, Australia. Fayen’s projects are often collaborative, and resist spectatorship by inviting audiences into sensorial readings of artworks and texts. A lifetime of fluctuating vision has spurred creative research into blindness as a critical and imaginative position. Her artworks and exhibitions have introduced tactile, gestural, and vibrational typographies and poetics; invited myopic readings of artworks and texts; handled the tangible, intangible, and concealed; documented ephemeral encounters through hallucinatory recall; expanded the perceptual and performative space of publication; navigated uncertainty through blundering; and animated intersensory translations and conversations.

Next Wave

Next Wave is a leading not-for-profit arts organisation dedicated to supporting early-career artists working across multiple art forms. Next Wave plays a defining role in the Australian arts landscape by empowering and advocating for early-career and experimental artistic practice in Australia.

This event is part of Next Wave's ALL School programming. ALL School is an artist-led learning program designed to facilitate knowledge sharing and idea swapping.

CAST

CAST produces art research that critically engages with social and public spheres with a particular interest in how artistic practices intersect with issues of equity, access and democracy.

Accessibility

The RMIT Garden Building is located at Level 5, Building 10, RMIT University 376-392 Swanston Street, Melbourne. This is a wheelchair accessible building with an elevator located behind Streat Cafe on Bowen Street (between Swanston and Russell streets).

Some on-street parking is available on LaTrobe Street. Trams operate along Swantson Street – get off at RMIT University stop and go to Bowen Street via La Trobe Street.

Artists in the Archive is supported by City of Melbourne