Mishka is an Autistic artist whose practice explores the beauty of neurodiversity within alternative and queer cultural narratives. Mishka studied Fine Arts at VCA and Art Therapy at Phoenix Institute, they continue to explore this rich dynamic between art and psychology. Working for more than a decade in Melbourne’s arts communities, Mishka’s diverse experience includes performance art and co-directing both theatre and film shows for the Melbourne Fringe Festival and Gertrude Street Film Festival. They have been co-directing, dancing, and creating miniatures for film clips with local musicians such as Aarti Jadu and Haitus Kaiyote.

Aarti Jadu’s practice naturally bridges diverse ideologies bridging worlds of eastern modalities and modern compositional instrumentation. She fervently explores voice through electronics to better understand sound and energy.

Zoë Barry is a cellist, composer and performance maker, moving between theatre, film, gallery commissions and the digital space. She works with music, text and field recordings to explore the politics of slowness and amplifying quiet voices. She is a member of The Letter String Quartet and Iranian trio Dafta Aval.

Lia Dewey Morgan is a poet, writer and emerging librarian living on stolen land in Narrm. As a trans and neurodivergent woman, she hopes her practice can encourage divergent thinking through times of urgency.

Mish Szekelyhidi (they/them) is an artist and researcher currently exploring accessible ways for musicians and visual artists of all abilities to think, construct and collaborate on music via expanded score writing approaches: braille, audio description, tactile-haptic, technologically-mediated, sensor-based and sensory processing. And further, imagining and working out how to practically materialise this knowledge, practice, community-building within new formulations of community-based and formalised educational settings.

Dr Alyse Brown is a cognitive neuroscientist who is endlessly fascinated with neurodiversity, a term she feels is best used to describe all brains. Alyse completed her Ph.D. at La Trobe University and then spent two years working at University of Cambridge, UK. While at Cambridge they were developing neuroimaging techniques to investigate language comprehension in non-verbal autistic people. Alyse’s aim is to show what people with lived experience already understand, that cognitive ability is not a straight line where you can pin point one function of the brain as an indicator of all function.

When I walk through galleries, I normally can’t read the didactics because I have all five types of dyslexia. My friends walk around galleries and read everything out to me, and we discuss our responses to artworks.

For Sublime Stim exhibition I’ve created QR codes which link to audio descriptions and artwork statements so you can feel like I am walking around and reading to you. My friend Mish who’s recorded me speaking helps me out with a few words here and there so you might feel like you are walking around with two Mish’s.

Evelyn Morris is wonderful to view artworks with, and they will be voicing this audio descriptions written by Milly Cooper.

I hope you will feel like you have a supportive group of queer artist friends sharing these artworks with you.

Words being spoken are an intrinsic part of how I experience art.

That’s why I wanted to share it with you in this way.

- Mishka

“Sublime Stim is a conceptually driven work on the brain. Did you know your brain is different from other people? It’s easy for the non-autistic to forget that they are a part of neurodiversity, which is as wonderous as biodiversity.

Ever enjoyed popping bubble wrap? Then you have been sensory seeking in a process-based way. Whilst all people sensory seek, the practice of developing a vocabulary of sensory acts is more pronounced in the Autistic community. This practice is called Stimming.

As part of The Warehouse Residency, Autistic and non-Autistic artists, musicians and experts from the field of neurology will be exploring stim vocabularies as an artistic process. This artwork is a collaborative stim through the body of my community.

Together we create and share a performance piece with musicians exploring stim as sound and exhibition of film installation and artworks with projection mapping. Demystifying Autistic practices and sharing in our cultural dance.” 

– Mishka

Concept & Lead Artist: Mishka
Video & Sound Editing: Mish Szekelyhidi
Collaborating Artists & Musicians: Aarti Jadu, Mish Szekelyhidi, Zoë Barry, Evelyn Ida Morris
Collaborating Artist & Neuroscientist: Alyes Brown
Collaborating Artist & Occupational Therapist: Natalka Pawlus
Collaborating Artist & Former Support Worker: Edith Gilfedder
Collaborating Artists: Artemis Derlanea Muñoz and Lia Dewey Morgan
Autistic Advocate & Film Contributor: Prue Stevenson
Creative Producer: Sarah Rowbottam
Volunteer Artists: Sophia Constantine, Irit Rozenfeld, Melody Shotade, Milly Cooper, Erin Vivian, Adam Seymour, Lucy Crossett, Mohamed Chamas, Tyrone, River Romano-Leuzzi, Mika Dick, Celia King, Ayesha Tauseef, Leah Pavlidis, Resin Alyssia, Patrick Fox, Antonia Green, Charlie Major, Luci Spectre, Lara Bardsley, Jacqueline Beckmann, Stav Shaul, Swann Biguet, Mia Pandji Sakti, Katina Anaipakos, Ben Dynan, Monika Andrew Poray, Asher Glass, Sam Petersen, Joshua Lynzaat, Sunny Short, Masoumeh Ahmadi, Rob Deguara, Sarah Rowbottam, Aarti Jadu, Goldie Barry, Mishka, Zoe, Sheshtin H, Stephen O, Alice B, Breanna F, Daniele C, Freya T, Kane S, Sinead S, Tallula B, Bryan J, Cheryl, Alison T, Cat S, Daniel C, Eza B, Patricia T, Jenny B, Mark D, Robert C.
Artist Assistants: Mish Szekelyhidi, Evelyn Ida Morris, Artemis Derlanea Muñoz, Isabelle McKenna, Sunny Short, Alyssia Resin Surace.

Sublime Stim is supported by the City of Melbourne through Arts House.