BEMAC Discussions: The Language of Displacement (Live and Streamed)

Join us on Monday August 25th for the next instalment in the BEMAC Discussions series, a free panel discussion titled “The Language of Displacement”. How do artists express the experience of being displaced, whether through migration, exile, or diaspora? This panel discussion brings together artists whose work navigates memory, identity, and belonging across borders. Through conversation, they will explore how stories of place, loss, and cultural continuity are carried, reimagined, and shared—often with audiences unfamiliar with those lived realities.

Moderated by Zhila Gholami, the panel will feature Egan Sun-Bin, Devina Saberi, Sha Sarwari and Rushdi Anwar.

For those who are not able to physically attend the sessions, BEMAC Discussions will be live streamed on BEMAC’s Facebook page facebook.com/BEMACpresents 

Following the panel discussion, the evening will continue with a performance by creative residents ‘Run Free’, an evocative, improvised performance group comprising poetry, music and movement. Led by slam poet Huda The Goddess and multi-instrumentalist Cieavash Arean, and featuring music by Amir Reza Vahdati and movement by The Flood, the group will creatively respond to the theme of the panel with their signature raw, authentic expression of personal and collective stories, deeply rooted in their experiences of revolution, identity, and survival. Through their real-time, dynamic collaboration, ‘Run Free’ reminds us that artists are the historians of our communities, daring to share the uncomfortable truths of our world by a fearless pursuit of truth through creativity.

6:30pm, Monday 25 August
Queensland Multicultural Centre
102 Main Street, Kangaroo Point QLD
Free (RSVP below)

There is limited parking at the QMC. We encourage all guests to use public transport. QMC is only a 2-minute walk from the Holman Street Ferry Terminal and bus route 234. You can find more info about how to get to QMC at http://qmc.org.au/visit

Panel Bios:

Egan Sun-Bin is a Chinese - Khmer storyteller working in both QLD and NSW. Egan currently holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in Acting from the Queensland University of Technology and was recently part of the award winning independent production Scene From A Yellow Peril as co-director and co-producer. His art aims to address political conversations or platforming the Asian Diaspora in cultural conversation. Outside the creative process, Egan works as an Organiser for the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance advocating for equity within our creative workplaces.

Devina Saberi is an Iranian-Australian filmmaker and community practitioner whose work foregrounds marginalised voices and the importance of community. With a background in law and research, Devina partners with individuals and communities to create honest, culturally grounded stories, often through collaborative practice and participatory filmmaking. Her recent work includes “Growing Pains”, a documentary series exploring love, family, and ambition through the eyes of three BIPOC young adults in Meanjin/Brisbane, and “The Mosaics Project”, a multilingual work rights resource co-created with international students and refugees. Through her work, Devina explores the intimate experiences of migrants and refugees as a powerful lens for understanding broader questions of identity, belonging, and social change.

Sha Sarwari, a Hazara born in Afghanistan is a multidisciplinary visual artist and graphic designer. His artistic practice encompasses a diverse range of mediums, through his work, Sarwari intricately weaves together allegorical layers, resulting in a visual experience that evokes  poetic sense. His work captures the essence of a liminal space, a realm suspended between two worlds, longing and belonging, with a pointed reference to the sociopolitical discourse around, migration, identity, place, memory, nationhood, and personal lived experience. In his recent works Sarwari intentionally imbeds the visual aesthetic of Farsi scrip ‘Nastaliq’. By incorporating this distinctive script into his work, he not only pays homage to his cultural heritage but also utilizes its visual aesthetic to echo and convey a deeper conceptual meanings and narratives.

Rushdi Anwar was born in Halabja, Kurdistan (Kurdistan-Iraq). His work reflects on the socio-political issues that continue to mire West Asia’s geopolitics (historically known as ‘The Middle East’). Drawing on his personal experiences of displacement, conflict, and trauma endured under Iraq’s colonial and ideological regimes, Anwar’s art references and generates discourse concerning the status of social equity—exploring its political, social, and religious complexity via study of form and its materiality. Embracing installation, sculpture, painting, photography, and video, his practice recalls the everyday plight of the thousands displaced currently suffering discrimination and persecution, questioning the possibility of redemption and collective necessity to attend with empathy as a social imperative.

Zhila Gholami earned her PhD in Literature from Griffith University. Her doctoral thesis, Roots and Routes: Kurdish Literature as World Literature, examined anglophone testimonial narratives produced by diasporic Kurdish poets and novelists. Her research interests include postcolonial and diaspora literature, witness literature, memory and post-memory studies, refugee narratives, displacement and resilience, as well as art activism. Zhila’s work has been published in Continuum, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, and a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. Her forthcoming book, Readers as Witnesses, Witnesses as Resistance, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2025. She was the 2024 Fryer Fellow at the University of Queensland, where she studied a unique archive of letters written by refugees detained on Nauru between 2001 and 2005. In 2025, she holds the John Oxley Fellowship at the State Library of Queensland, where she is documenting and preserving stories of refugee experiences and highlighting their cultural and social contributions to Queensland society.