Interview #57 — Rachel Tai

‘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.’

InterviewLeah McIntosh21 May 2018

Interview #56 — Naomi Velaphi

‘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.’

InterviewLeah McIntosh14 May 2018robertwood

Interview #55 — Nikki Lam

‘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.’

InterviewLeah McIntosh7 May 2018

Interview #54 — Ellen YG Son

‘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.’

InterviewLeah McIntosh29 April 2018

Interview #53 — Omar Sakr

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

InterviewLeah McIntosh23 April 2018robertwood

Interview #52 — Creatrix Tiara

'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.'

InterviewLeah McIntosh16 April 2018

Interview #51 — Emma Do

'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.'

InterviewLeah McIntosh9 April 2018

Interview #50 — Margot Tanjutco

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

2, InterviewLeah McIntosh2 April 2018

Interview #49 — Jean Tong

'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.'

InterviewLeah McIntosh25 March 2018

Interview #48 — Phuong Ngo

‘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?’

InterviewLeah McIntosh18 March 2018

Interview #47 — Vivienne La

‘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?’

InterviewLeah McIntosh12 March 2018

Interview #46 — Mindy Gill

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

InterviewLeah McIntosh5 March 2018

Interview #45 — Pia Johnson

'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.'

InterviewLeah McIntosh25 February 2018Blog

Interview #44 — Shu-Ling Chua

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

InterviewLeah McIntosh18 February 2018

Interview #43 — Jessica Yu

'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.'

InterviewLeah McIntosh11 February 2018

Interview #42 — Chervil Tan

'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.'

InterviewLeah McIntosh5 February 2018

Interview #41 — Eileen Chong

'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.'

InterviewLeah McIntosh28 January 2018robertwood

Interview #40 — Lachy Siu

'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.'

InterviewLeah McIntosh21 January 2018

Interview #39 — Vivan Vo

'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.'

InterviewLeah McIntosh18 December 2017