‘The personal is political, especially for people from marginalised and minoritised groups, and to me, art is personal—so, then, art is political.’

‘I’ve gone through many phases of being Chinese-Canadian: curiosity, realisation, ignorance, acceptance, and finally a full and forgiving self-embrace.’

‘Don’t bully yourself by constantly comparing your work and your output to other people; some people work quickly and some more slowly, some have more time, or more access to materials.’

‘As a person of colour, in the arts it’s an exciting time where for the first time it feels like voices and stories from diverse communities can just ‘be’, rather than curtailing to a white framework as a given.’

‘I have been thinking a lot of the power imbalance between artists and curators / arts workers. Inequality runs so deep within this power structure. I believe that there is so much to be done, to be changed.’

‘What I am suggesting is that some people may have either multiple senses of belonging to diverse cultures or no sense of belonging even to one culture at all.’

‘Fantasy literature shaped me wholly... fantasy as a mode is about transformation & so is poetry itself. It rearranges the possible.’

'Exposing the ways that those discordant parts exist is important to me: here I am, I do exist, & I’m probably not the only weirdo in this situation so I’d like to connect to people who can understand. Liminality is the only constant thing about me.'

'There is a tendency to only talk about exploitation of workers in the garment industry as something that happens overseas, but it happened in Australia for a long time.'

‘We deserve to be happy. We have the right to be seen, and the right to demand to be seen.’

'Musical theatre is shockingly white, and a lot of ‘classic’ favourites are decades old and racist in content and casting. However, the way those stories are told is deeply familiar.'

‘Pursuing a career in the creative fields is a luxury... When you've struggled to put food on the table, the mentality is often ‘why would you go out and choose to deliberately be poor?’

'I’ve always been fascinated with still life, and the visual puzzle of creating balance in arrangement—why does an incremental shift within a set of objects make my brain see disharmony and imbalance?'

'Reading is great, and incredibly important, talking to writers is also good and important. But writers write. There is no other secret.'

'I have more recently embraced the non-white, female, cross cultural box or label, and have felt strength by owning it. At the same time I feel uncomfortable to be boxed in by it—it is complex.'

'Writing has helped me to understand and accept aspects of who I am.'

'I think counteracting dehumanising thinking with deeply tender, rigorous, humanising fiction and essayistic writing is the best way to reclaim my racial identity from the white gaze.'

'There’s a resilience that people don’t realise about models. We have to deal with that face-to-face judgement about something you can’t really change. So you just have to be who you are.'

'I do not have very strong boundaries between my private and creative self: so many of my own interests and passions bleed right into my work.'

'Our euro-colonial aesthetic lens has blinded us to objects that don’t fit our preconceived cultural mould, one that has been ingrained into us over the last 200 years.'

'It’s obvious that we’re not being represented. In festival line-ups, music playlists and artist rosters, we’re still fighting for diversity; people of colour are a token.'

‘I feel dance is an essential human activity—as Pina Bausch said, ‘Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost!’ Indeed.’

'I think no matter what, each artist is always political.'

'Dance was my haven from racist pressures for assimilation.'

'I don’t have the sense of fulfillment about my own work that allows me to stop changing, to stop learning. It’s never-ending.'

'You can’t be everything to everyone nor should you desire that... sometimes you just have to tune out and run your own race.'

'We have been socialised to think that ‘serious’ philosophy is a white man’s game.'

'I think anyone who has grown up as something of an outsider develops unique ways of viewing the world, other people.'

'Design aims to take ordinary, everyday products like clothes and gives them that human touch and something to connect with.'