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Announcing Inciting Joy featuring Tiana Khasi & Cecilia Sordi Campos. Plus Brunswick Music Festival & Sydney Road Street Party! ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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“I should be dancing with happiness.”
But it happened again. It happens
when we make bottomless love— there follows a bottomless sadness
which is not despair
but its nameless opposite.
— ‘Joy’ by Lisel Mueller (1)
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Announcing Inciting Joy featuring Tiana Khasi and Cecilia Sordi Campos, our first residency project for 2025. Plus, Brunswick Music Festival & Sydney Road Street Party.
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Today, we're excited to announce Inciting Joy, our first residency project for the year, from 2 March until 31 May 2025, featuring future soul artist Tiana Khasi and visual artist, writer and researcher Cecilia Sordi Campos.
In March, we’re also thrilled to announce our return to Sydney Road Street Party, where we will showcase the first exhibit in connection with Inciting Joy, our books for sale by Australia-based writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry and two special conversation events with resident artist Cecilia and author Grace Yee.
On Friday, 7 March, we rejoin our partner Brunswick Music Festival (BMF) to present Tiana Khasi/Returning to Meghalaya. Positioned in the context of her wider residency project, where Tiana will explore intersections between her live performance, group singing practice, and community work more deeply, this rich and layered performance as part of BMF expands upon her critically acclaimed 2019 debut EP, Meghalaya, leaning into her deep love of vocal harmonising that is grounded in and honours her Samoan and Indian cultural heritage. Please read on to learn more about Incting Joy, its first month of audience activities, and these special events. In the meantime, until Friday, 21 February, please pop in for Mingle. Meet. Be our little pop-up book/tea shop. Our window display showcases a selection of books offered for sale by some of our favourite writers and artists, including limited copies of the poetry chapbook, ‘an ordinary cup of tea’ by local artist Dean Mundey.
In closing, we wish to acknowledge and sincerely thank the Merri-Bek City Council/Arts Merri-Bek for supporting our 2025 creative program via the 2024-2025 Flourish Arts Grant Program.
Warmly correspondences Studio
Credits:
Cecilia Sordi Campos, Alegria # 8 (detail), 2024, mixed media, dimensions variable © Cecilia Sordi Campos
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BRUNSWICK| 2.3.25—31.5.25
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Upcoming projects/exhibitionsInciting Joy / Tiana Khasi & Cecilia Sordi Campos
2 March ––31 May 2025
Inciting Joy is a collaborative residency that examines how we understand, experience and cultivate joy in our everyday lives, the way that this transforms with different stages of womanhood and experiences of ecstatic connection with the human and the more-than-human world of nature.
Alongside our examination of joy is the exploration of its intersection with pleasure. More specifically, the action of reclaiming pleasure as a way of challenging wrongful stereotypes of womanhood and creating freedom and space for joy to happen.
At the heart of the project is a proposition. Joy is a form of resistance —an action, practice or method of being cultivated in search of a greater purpose, entangled with others and the natural world, and often, but not always, brought into focus by what we have suffered. As the poet, essayist and Professor of literature, Ross Gay writes: My hunch is that joy, emerging from our common sorrow — which does not necessarily mean we have the same sorrows, but that we, in common, sorrow — might draw us together. It might depolarize us and de-atomize us enough that we can consider what, in common, we love. (2) And yet, joy is mysterious, multiform and unpredictable. Sometimes it comes about not in relation to suffering but in response to our ancient, ecstatic, embodied connection with the natural world and its deep, unknowable mysteries. As the naturalist Michael McCarthy writes: There can be occasions when we suddenly and involuntarily find ourselves loving the natural world with a startling intensity, in a burst of emotion which we may not fully understand, and the only word that seems to me to be appropriate for this feeling is joy, and when I talk of the joy we can find in nature, this is what I mean. (3) In these moments, we do not encounter the joy of discovering meaning necessarily but perhaps the joy of finding spiritual refuge from the existential obligation to make meaning — to simply 'be' in relation to the world and its phenomena.
Presented in three parts, Inciting Joy features the music, performance and community-singing practice of Samoan/Indian future soul artist Tiana Khasi and the video, poetry and mixed-media works of Brazilian visual artist, writer and researcher Cecilia Sordi Campos.
The title of our project pays homage to Ross Gay’s book of the same name, Inciting Joy, his inspired thinking and poetry about the deep matter of joy.
We also wish to acknowledge the translations of ‘Inciting Joy’ below - in Samoan, Brazillian Portuguese and Khasi. Our communications will shift between these translations/titles as the artists continue to explore them together through this project.
Faaosofia Le Olioli /Aguçando Alegria/ Ka jingpynshlur ia ka jingkmen
Alongside the exhibitions, special events and activities for audiences are planned. For further information, continue reading or head to our Ticket Tailor Event page via the button below.
The words above are those of curator Emma Thomson except where otherwise noted.
Notes—
(1) Lisel Mueller, ‘Joy’, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, 1996, LSU Press, p. 199
(2) Ross Gay, Inciting Joy, 2022, Algonquin Books, New York, p. 9
(3) Michael McCarthy, The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy, 2015 (Kindle ed), John Murray, p. 244
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BRUNSWICK| 2.3.25—29.3.25
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Upcoming Special Events & Activities
Artist In Conversation - Cecilia Sordi Campos / Inciting Joy
Presented as part of Sydney Road Street Party
Sunday, 2 March, 11:00 AM-12:30 PM
correspondences Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country 39 Sydney Road Bulleke-bek (Brunswick) VIC
We warmly invite you to a conversation with artist Cecilia Sordi Campos as we explore her first exhibit in connection with Inciting Joy, her collaborative residency project with future soul artist Tiana Khasi.
This first part of the project showcases her award-winning photobook together with a selection of photographic prints and works of moving images from her 2019 project Tem Bigato Nessa Goiaba and a series of new images under development. Entitled Alegria or joy in Brazilian Portuguese, the images were made as a response to the project’s central theme, in particular, the notion of ‘joy as resistance’. They explore intersections with Tem Bigato Nessa Goiaba and take inspiration from the sounds and lyrics of Tiana’s music. Tiana’s critically acclaimed 2019 debut EP Meghalaya and her recent release, ‘As Good As It Gets’. Credit: Cecilia Sordi Campos, self-portrait (detail) © Cecilia Sordi Campos Press the ‘JOIN THE GUEST LIST’ button below to RSVP.
Attendance is free. RSVP is essential.
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Writer In Conversation — Grace Yee about her book, Chinese Fish
Presented as part of Sydney Road Street Party
Sunday 2 March, 2:00-3:30 PM
correspondences Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country 39 Sydney Road Bulleke-bek (Brunswick) VIC Join us for a conversation with Naarm/Melbourne-based writer, poet, and researcher Grace Yee to explore her debut poetry collection, Chinese Fish. Awarded the prestigious Victorian Prize for Literature in 2024, we know you will love Grace's book as much as we do.
Chinese Fish is a family saga that spans the 1960s through to the 1980s. Narrated in multiple voices and laced with archival fragments and scholarly interjections, it offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of women and girls in a community that has historically been characterised as both a ‘yellow peril’ menace and an exotic ‘model minority’. Credit: Cover of Chinese Fish Giramondo Press 2023 © Grace Yee The text above is courtesy of the publisher. Photograph of Grace: Demelza Wong Press the ‘JOIN THE GUEST LIST’ button below to book.
Tickets are $10. Bookings are essential.
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Tiana Khasi/Returning to Meghalaya
Presented as part of Brunswick Music Festival
Friday, 7 March, 6:30-9:00 PM
correspondences Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country 39 Sydney Road Bulleke-bek (Brunswick) VIC Tiana Khasi/Returning to Meghalaya showcases the soulful storytelling of Naarm-based future soul artist Tiana Khasi. Positioned in the context of her wider residency project, where Tiana will explore intersections between her live performance, group singing practice, and community work more deeply, this rich and layered performance expands upon her critically acclaimed 2019 debut EP, Meghalaya, leaning into her deep love of vocal harmonising that is grounded in and honours her Samoan and Indian cultural heritage. Before and after the performance, guests are welcome to explore the exhibit in the space featuring sounds by Tiana and images by co-resident artist Cecilia. Press the ‘JOIN THE GUEST LIST’ button below to book.
Tickets are $15. Bookings are essential. Credit: Photograph of Tiana by Daniel Grima
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Community singing & performance with Tiana Khasi
Thursday, 20 March, 6:30-8:00 PM Session 1 - Workshop
Thursday, 17 April, 6:30-8:00 PM Session 2 - Workshop
Thursday, 24 April, 6:30-8:00 PM Session 3 - Workshop/Rehearsal
correspondences Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country 39 Sydney Road Bulleke-bek (Brunswick) VIC
Together with Tiana, we invite you to join us and sing together as a community for three months, working towards a performance by Tiana and you as a community choir on Friday, 31 May, at a beautiful outdoor location to be disclosed soon! Over the course of the residency, Tiana will lead three Thursday evening sessions, two workshops and one rehearsal. Each session will run for one hour from 6:30 to 7:30 PM, and then participants are invited to linger for a drink in reflection until 8:00 PM. We encourage participants to attend all three sessions and to also be part of our final performance to deepen engagement. But if you can only attend one or two sessions, we still encourage you to join us.
No singing experience is necessary. This is about the joy of joining our voices together in song. We ask you to please confirm your availability to join the performance at your first session.
Press the ‘JOIN THE GUEST LIST’ button below to book. Full Course (1 Adult): $30 / for 3 sessions
Single Booking (1 Adult): $10 /for 1 session
Limited free tickets for single sessions are available.
First-in-best-dressed. Bookings are essential. Credits: Photograph of Tiana by Sulamain Enayatzada
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Acknowledgement of CountryWe respectfully acknowledge the Sovereign Custodians of the land and waters upon which we live and work, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. We extend this respect to all First Peoples.
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