Makeshift Publics Artists 2022 – 23
Makeshift Publics supports artists to explore ideas of place in a changed city.
Acknowledging artists as leaders, Makeshift Publics asks committed practitioners to explore new methods of rebuilding fundamentally disrupted social ecologies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With a process driven by a cross-disciplinary team of arts leaders, the Makeshift Publics program is for committed arts practitioners who want to explore new contexts for contemporary art in a year-long program in which artists investigate this shift.
After an intense selection process we’re thrilled to reveal the artists who will take up the challenge of Makeshift Publics 2022 – 23.
Moonis Ahmad
Moonis Ahmad (b.1992) born in Kashmir is an artist whose practice transverses various media such as installation, sculpture, programming, sound and video. His work through the intersection of art, philosophical speculation and historical enquiry seeks to contemplate the emergence of new worlds and heretical flights of time and objects to critically address the questions of territory, language, belonging, gatherings and borders. He has shown his work at various exhibitions nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art’s Emerging Artist Award, 2017-18. Currently, he is a Doctoral Candidate and a Sessional Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. He lives and works between Srinagar, Kashmir and Melbourne, Australia.
Kate ten Buuren
Kate ten Buuren is a Taungurung curator, artist and writer working on Kulin Country. Kate’s cross-disciplinary practise investigates collective and collaborative ways of working, and her interest in contemporary visual art, film and oral traditions is grounded in self-determination, self-representation and the power of knowing one another. Kate is the founder and active member of First Nations arts collective this mob who make space for young artists to connect and create on their own terms. Kate currently works as a Curator at ACMI and was previously Curator at the Koorie Heritage Trust
Nina Buchanan
Nina Buchanan is a musician and composer whose work encompasses performing and releasing electronic music, sound installation, collaborating with other artists to produce scores and sound design, music research, skill sharing and teaching. Her work engages with sound and music as an alternate way to understand our social, environmental and technological contexts. Nina has released two EPs and an album, Restless Abandon (2021), with performances for Melbourne Music Week, The Substation, Asia Topa, Liquid Architecture, and Carriageworks, and composition work featured at festivals nationally and internationally. In 2016, she co-founded queer radio program Sweet Dreams at 3CR Community Radio and facilitates electronic music workshops for community groups. Nina currently works at Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio (MESS) and is completing a Masters in Composition at Monash.
Dr. Tania Cañas
Dr. Tania Cañas is an artist-researcher based on unceded Kulin Territory. Her practice looks at socially engaged and community-led creative practices as sites of collaboration, modalities of resistance as well as ways to rethink processes and re-cast institutions. She is the Artistic Lead at Arts Gen, a community arts and health organisation, and leads the Performance and Community Engagement and social practice courses at the VCA, University of Melbourne. Tania has published through Currency Press Australia, Intellect Books, Melbourne University Publishing, Arts Hub and e-flux as well as various international academic journals and magazines. She has presented at conferences as well as facilitated performance workshops locally and internationally.
Mohamed Chamas
Mohamed Chamas is an artist, independent game developer and poet based in Naarm (melbourne) who channels the ‘dijitaldjinni’; a rewiring agent for practice-based research. Mohamed’s work evokes ancient mysticism to fuse and synergize with emerging technologies. Mohamed’s Virtual Reality (VR) works exist as unsurveilled sites of healing for orientalized bodies; namely Baab 02 (2021) , باب القرين (Baab Al Qareen) 2020 and سايبر تصوف (cyber tasawwuf) 2018- the latter received two nominations at Freeplay Independent Game Festival in 2019. They’ve exhibited at SEVENTH Gallery, Testing Grounds, Incinerator Gallery and Trocadero Arts Space. Mohamed’s words have appeared in Co-, The Lifted Brow, Liminal Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review and Running Dog.
Ching Ching Ho
Ching Ching Ho is an independent director and producer, born in Hong Kong, based on the unceded lands of Kulin Nation in Naarm (Melbourne). Her practice focuses on intercultural dialogue and collaboration, cultural translation, multilingual writing and framework in theatre and contemporary performance. She has worked on Asia TOPA’s ‘Oedipus Schmoedipus’ (2020) and Chamber Made’s ‘Between 8 & 9’ (2017) as a producer; co-directed for Barking Gecko Theatre’s ‘A Ghost In My Suitcase’ (2018-19); directed and dramaturged for Contemporary Asian Australian Performance’s ‘Lotus Playwriting Project’ (2015-19); created ‘Approximate Translation’ as part of Malthouse’s Artist Curated Events (2016) and ‘7412 Kilometer of Relations’ as part of Big West Festival (2016). Ching Ching has recently worked on ‘Fist of Fury Noongar Daa’ as a language consultant for Perth Festival and Boomerang and Spear (2020) and co-curated ‘Eventide Conversations’ (2021) for the Australian Performing Arts Market & Hong Kong Arts Administrators Association.
Kush Kuiy
Kush Kuiy is a “doer of many things”. She is an independent producer/ artist/ writer/ curator and avid bird watcher. Kush brings her lived experience of suburban life to her producing practice, as a lifetime resident of the South-East of Melbourne, she stages innovative experiences that showcase performing artists emerging from South-East Melbourne’s burgeoning scene. She has worked with Outer Urban Projects on dance-theatre work Vigil, Kush also works with multi-disciplinary artist and activist Aseel Tayah and co-produced shows such as Bukjeh and Lullabies Under the Stars. She is the Creative Producer of Bridging Differences, a new multi-artform work featuring African-Australian artists in the outer South-East and far North suburbs and the Art Director of the GRID Series’ inaugural Sun, Earth and Moon Festival to be held in Cranbourne in 2022. She co-founded & is the producer of the annual Rise of South Sudan Music and Arts Festival & networking platform Blaxcellence. She is also a founding member of the Way Over There Collective – a group committed to building the arts scene in the City of Casey. With an inclination towards entrepreneurship she is the founder & Director of Nostalgic Events and co-founder of DC Workspace which successfully initiated Popspace – a pop-up creative co-working space in Dandenong CBD. Kush is the recipient of the 2021 Lindsay King Arts Award and Creative Victoria and Theater Networks Australia’s, 2020 Victorian Independent Producers Initiative. Kush has a Bachelor of Arts (Maj. International Relations and Min. Journalism) from Deakin University. Her academic background translates to her artistic practice as she explores how bridges can be built between Australia and Africa through soft diplomacy.
Audrey Lam
Audrey Lam is an artist-filmmaker. Her films have been screened around the world, including at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Melbourne International Film Festival, the Centre Pompidou and Austrian Film Museum. Audrey has participated in arts workshops and residencies including Fondazione Antonio Ratti Advanced Course, Locarno Filmmakers Academy and Asialink Arts Residency. She has co-curated film seasons at the National Gallery of Victoria and Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Audrey is a member of Artist Film Workshop.
Bella Waru
Bella Waru (Ngati Tukorehe // Te Ati Awa) is a movement and sound artist, cultural producer, performer, weaver, community arts facilitator and body worker living, listening and responding across sacred, unceded Indigenous lands, currently those of the Kulin Nation in so-called-australia. A diasporic Indigenous Sovereign and queer femme, Waru creates stories and spaces to honour, uplift, protect and nourish the vitality of their communities, ancestral knowledges, cultures and lands. They create, emerging from and returning to the body as a vessel of personal, ancestral and earth memory, invested in embodied experiences of connection, healing, incantation, transmutation and celebration.
Moonis Ahmad image courtesy of the artist; Kate ten Buuren image courtesy of the artist; Nina Buchanan image courtesy of the artist; Dr. Tania Cañas image by Jody Haines; Mohamed Chamas image by Hashem McAdam; Ching Ching Ho image courtesy of the artist; Kush Kuiy image courtesy of the artist; Audrey Lam image courtesy of the artist; Bella Waru image courtesy of the artist.
