International Women's Day 2020
#IWD2020 #EachforEqual
Today we are introducing the list of incredible women and GNC creatives who are contributing to Silent Dialogue. International Women's Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality. IWD is not country, group or organisation specific.
Note:— Due to COVID-19, our event website is currently closed and will re-launch in 2021. Pre-sales of our book remain open here.
Carolyn Ang
Book designer Carolyn Ang is a multi-disciplinary designer specialising in editorial design and publishing, brand identities and art direction. Having a love for typography, photography and a minimalist simplicity, she takes a purposeful approach to craft considered design solutions—always with a focus on strategy and being content and concept driven. Ang was the enormously talented design creative behind the most recent edition of Going Down Swinging, to name but one of her recent projects. Her website provides an overview of this and other examples of her work including the Matters Journal (2019), which was awarded a Merit at the AGDA Design Awards.
Echo Cai
Photograph by Echo Cai
Exhibiting artist, co-curator and speaker Echo Cai is the founder and curator of the Chinese-Australian Contemporary Artists (“CACA”) and Art Echo. She arrived in Australia in 1989 after completing her Bachelors Degree in Art at Peking University. Since 2003 Cai has exhibited widely and her works are represented in private and public collections in Australia and China. Since 2014, in addition to CACA shows, Cai has curated a range of group exhibitions in Melbourne including: the Chinese Australian Artists Exhibition (2017); This Street Art Event: Mapping Melbourne Art Festival (2017); Multi Art Fashion Show (2016); and, the Melbourne Chinese Australian Short Movie Competition (2015).
Jenny Zhe Chang
Exhibiting artist and speaker Jenny Zhe Chang creates sculptures, paper cuttings, paintings and installations that investigate the interaction between Eastern and Western ways of being. Her solo exhibitions include: Love! From head to toe (Tian Qiao Theatre, 2019); South Wind Rises (National Taiwan Arts Education Centre, 2018); and, Beyond, A Century’s Love (T3 International Art Zone Contemporary Museum, 2016), to name but a few. Since 2001, Chang has also participated in more than 52 group shows in Australia, Japan, and the US. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) from the Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne and a Master of Computing from Monash University.
Eileen Chong
Photograph by Charlene Winfred
Contributing essayist and speaker Eileen Chong is a poet based in Sydney. She was born in Singapore of Chinese descent. Her poetry collections are Burning Rice (2012), Peony (2014), Painting Red Orchids (2016), and Rainforest (2018), all from Pitt Street Poetry, Sydney. Chong writes about food, family, migration, love and loss. The Singaporean-Australian poet Boey Kim Cheng has said that ‘Chong’s work offers a poetry of feeling, rendered in luminous detail and language, alive to the sorrows and joys of daily living'. To find out more about Chong's array of awards and projects, see her website.
Chun Yin Rainbow Chan
Photograph by Hyun Lee
Soundscape creator and speaker 陳雋然 / Chun Yin Rainbow Chan is a vocalist, producer and multi-disciplinary artist who has built a reputation as one of the most innovative musicians in Australia. Both heartbreaking and tender at once, her idiosyncratic brand of pop holds a mirror up to diasporic experiences, and also deeply personal tales of love and loss. Chan has performed at renowned venues and festivals including Sydney Opera House, Vivid, MONA FOMA, Gallery of Modern Art, Melbourne Music Week, Iceland Airwaves, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, and Tai Kwun (Hong Kong). Additionally, her multi-arts installations have been exhibited with Firstdraft Gallery, Liquid Architecture, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and I-Project Space, Beijing.
Pei Pei He
Photograph by Pei Pei
Exhibiting artist and speaker Pei Pei He’s art training started at the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s when she was able to take up an opportunity to study visual art in China. Arriving in Australia in 1987, she returned to her art education in 2005, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne in 2010. She has since been involved in an array of prestigious art prizes and exhibitions including; the Archibald Prize (2018), the Sulman Prize (2013), the Dobell Prize (2011), the Wynne Prize (2009), and the Paul Guest Prize (2018, 2016, 2014, 2012), to name only a small few. He’s works are represented in private and public collections throughout the country, including the City of Melbourne and Artbank.
Julie Koh
Photograph by Hugh Stewart
Essayist and speaker Julie Koh is the author of two short-story collections: Capital Misfits (Math Paper Press) and Portable Curiosities (UQP). The latter was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, the Steele Rudd Award in the Queensland Literary Awards, the UTS Glenda Adams Award in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and the Australian Science Fiction Foundation’s Norma K Hemming Award (Long Work). Her work has appeared in Best Australian Stories and Best Australian Comedy Writing and she has been published in Malaysia, Ireland and beyond. Koh edited the anthology BooksActually’s Gold Standard, co-founded the experimental literary collective Kanganoulipo, and judged the 2018 Stella Prize. She has written two radio plays for ABC Radio National and the libretto for the satirical opera Chop Chef.
Ni Ni Li
Contributing artist and speaker NiNi Li is a film photographer, graphic designer, stylist and brand manager with more than five years of experience. Arriving in Australia in 2010 as a young person from China in pursuit of a career in the creative sector, her life experience has shaped her creative outlook, which is a cross-pollination of Chinese and Western inspiration much focused on people and the everyday. An alumna of Monash University, today NiNi leads a busy life in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, juggling freelance art and design projects with her ceramics and photography practice.
Selina Lo
Speaker Dr Selina Lo has a medical and legal background and is the Executive Director of the Australian Global Health Alliance. She is also a consulting editor at The Lancet, where she was formerly Senior Editor in London and Beijing. Previously she was the Medical Director of the Access to Medicines Campaign MSF based in Geneva, and the Clinton Foundation clinical advisor to the China CDC director of the HIV AIDS national treatment programme. From 1996-2005 she led medical humanitarian projects for MSF in Afghanistan, Burma, Thailand and China and Bangladesh. She is affiliated with the Monash Sustainable Development Institute and Melbourne University School of Population and Global Health. Selina is committed to global and planetary health justice and supporting artists and vulnerable communities in the Asia Pacific.
Kimberley Moulton
Essayist Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta Yorta woman, curator and writer and Senior Curator South Eastern Aboriginal Collections at Museums Victoria, where she has curated numerous exhibitions for over ten years. Her practice works in de-colonial methodology and the intersection of research, community driven projects, contemporary art and historical cultural material. She has written extensively for art publications nationally and internationally and held research, curatorial and writing fellowships across the world. Alongside her museum practice Moulton has independently curated shows in various art museums across Australia and the USA. In 2019 she was the recipient of the Power Institute National Indigenous Art Writing Award. Moulton is co-editor for Artlink Indigenous edition 40.2 in 2020 and a member of the board of directors and deputy chair for Shepparton Art Museum.
Jinghua Qian
Photograph by Alexis Desaulniers-Lea
Contributing essayist and speaker Jinghua Qian is a Shanghainese writer living in the Kulin nations. Jinghua has written about labour movement history for Right Now, performed dirges of diasporic grief in a seafarers’ church for Going Down Swinging, and discussed the racial politics of cosmetic surgery on Radio National. Ey founded people of colour performance night POC THE MIC (2010-2012), and was a presenter and producer on 3CR Community Radio’s Queering the Air from 2012 to 2015. Currently serving on the board of Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine, Peril, their words have appeared in The Guardian, Overland, Peril, Cordite, Autostraddle, and Melbourne Writers’ Festival.
Emily Soon
Photograph by Thomas Feng
Performing artist and speaker Australian born, Malaysian-Chinese singer/songwriter Emily Soon never fails to surprise any first time listener. Her mellow, buttery voice almost reminiscent of Tracy Chapman, Norah Jones or Bonnie Raitt will leave you serenaded and mesmerised. Inspired by travel, changing relationships and newfound independence, her ensuing material evokes greater clarity, confidence and charisma. 'Good Help Is Hard To Find’ marks the next chapter in Emily’s story - an unlikely anthem co-written and produced by iconic Melbourne musician Henry Wagons. Don't miss her upcoming show at Melbourne Recital Centre and a special announcement for new work soon to be released.
Elizabeth Tan
Photograph by Leah Jing McIntosh
Contributing essayist and speaker Elizabeth Tan is a Perth writer and sessional academic at Curtin University. Her first book of fiction, Rubik, was published in 2017 by Brio Books, and went on to be published in North America and the United Kingdom. Elizabeth's work has appeared in The Lifted Brow, Overland, Stories of Perth, Catapult, Mascara Literary Review and Westerly. She was the co-editor of the anthology In This Desert, There Were Seeds, a collaboration between Margaret River Press of Western Australia and Ethos Books of Singapore. Elizabeth's second book of fiction, Smart Ovens For Lonely People, is forthcoming in 2020 from Brio Books.
Emma Thomson
Photograph by Tim Hillier
Co-curator, exhibition designer, producer and speaker Emma Thomson is an arts worker with an interest in socially engaged, situational and interdisciplinary practices. Her studio correspondences focuses on connecting diverse audiences, artists and art forms in ways that stimulate, inspire and question. She holds an MA in Curation from the University of Melbourne, along with qualifications in art history and ten years of professional work experience as an accomplished project manager. She recently curated Liu Bolin 刘勃麟/伪装 and Noémie Goudal / Telluris for the 2019 Ballarat International Foto Biennale.
Maria Tumarkin
Photograph by Sibylle Sdrojek
Contributing essayist and panel chair Maria Tumarkin writes books, essays, reviews, and pieces for performance and radio; she collaborates with sound and visual artists and has had her work carved into dockside tiles. She is the author of four books of ideas. The latest, Axiomatic (Brow Books), won the 2018 Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Best Writing Award and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Maria holds a PhD in cultural history and teaches creative writing at the University of Melbourne.
Acknowledgements
We respectfully acknowledge the sovereign custodians of the land upon which we live and work.
