Hyphenated Projects is a house located in Sunshine West, Melbourne and we offer a space for development and experimentation from artists working in transcultural contexts. The residency offers artists, writers, researchers and producers access to a suburban residence.
WHAT IS THE RESIDENCY
A ‘residency’ could be a community gathering, workshop, work-in-progress showing/crit session, a meal or a sleepover. We take a reciprocal approach towards the artists we host, and we believe in building ongoing relationships and support with artists through mentorships and other informal activities. While most of our residencies are not driven by outcomes, we expect residency artists to reciprocate generously and hold this space together with us.
The space includes a workspace/bedroom, kitchen with appliances, living room, bathroom, outdoor space/garden, laundry, on-site parking.
HOW WE HOST
We host local artists as well as artists from Asia-Pacific and interstate, and sometimes we partner with arts organisations to host their visiting artists, where we can connect them with our network.
Due to capacity we do not have an open call for residencies. Please sign up to our newsletter for upcoming opportunities.
To find out more about the way we work, please click here.
Liminal x Hyphenated Projects Writing Fellowship 2024
Shastra Deo
Shastra Deo was born in Fiji, raised in Melbourne, and lives in Brisbane. Her first book, The Agonist (UQP 2017), won the 2016 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the 2018 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Her second book, The Exclusion Zone (UQP 2023), is a love letter to all gamers.
Shastra will use the fellowship and residency at the Hyphenated Projects house to build on the backbone of her next poetry collection, Anatomy of the Sheep. Writing a suite of poems that diffracts sapphics in and around pop culture media through the lens of asexuality, a-spec desire, and a-spec time, Shastra seeks to explore the debts we bear to our entangled relations in this extended now and the yet to be.
image credit: Kate Lund
NEW HYPHENS 2023-2024
New Hyphens is a 2-year initiative for the freshly graduated artists of Asia-Pacific background. From the undergraduate exhibitions in Melbourne, we have selected one winner and two high commendations this year. The winner will receive $1,500 cash and residency at Hyphenated Projects and a year-long mentorship, while the highly commended artists will receive $500 cash and mentorship.
New Hyphens 2024 Winner: Hee Lee
Perth-based artist Hee Lee has a practice based on her experience of life between South Korea and Australia, exploring alienation, loneliness and community through sculptures and installations. Hee studied painting at Sejong University in South Korea before completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at RMIT University, where she was awarded The Bold and the Beautiful Award (2023). She works with bronze, ceramics, photography and installation.
New Hyphens 2023 Winner: Cam Wu
Cam Wu is a Chinese-Australian artist living and working on Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung land. Her practice is underpinned by an interest in ritual and narrative, bringing together broader histories and personal stories. Balancing playful humour and a research-informed practice, she explores sociohistorical connections with a poetic sensibility.
New Hyphens 2023 High Commendation: Jing Liang
Jing Liang’s practice explores her deep relationships to people and place. She creates artworks that raise questions and expand the perspective in understanding of the complexity of an environment, as well as the fragility of life and memory. Experimenting porcelain clay with the “burn out” technique, her work questions the boundaries of what ceramic form might be.
New Hyphens 2023 High Commendation: Lala Zarei
Lala Zarei is an Iranian-Australian multi-disciplinary artist. She tries to capture her identity by investigating contrasts between cultures through personal stories.
ACMI + Hyphenated Projects Digital Commission 2023
ACMI + Hyphenated Projects Digital Commission is a new opportunity for a moving image artist of Asia-Pacific heritage to develop a digital work for ACMI Gallery 5. We are excited to announce Melbourne-based artist Olivia Koh as the inaugural recipient of this new co-commission. Olivia will undertake an artist residency with Hyphenated Projects and ACMI X to develop this digital work for Spring 2023.
Olivia Koh
Olivia Koh is an artist and curator working in moving image production in Narrm/Melbourne. Drawing on a personal family history of land ownership, migration and extractive agriculture, her work examines the complexities and real challenges of navigating a diasporic identity and history. She holds a Master’s Degree in Fine Art Research at RMIT University (2022).
Olivia organises recess, an online platform for moving image works. The platform facilitates online exhibitions and physical screenings, including ‘the hearts of the people are bigger than the size of the land’ at RISING Festival (2021), 'recess presents', ACE Open (2020). recess is co-curating a suite of moving image works for the Artist Film Program for Melbourne Now, NGV Australia (2023).
Image credit: Kate Meakin
PAST RESIDENTS
Natalie Quan Yau Tso 左君悠
Natalie Quan Yau Tso 左君悠 is a Hong Kong-Australian artist who makes sculptures, installations and performances through embodied knowledge. She often activates intimate materials by performing with them and forming sculptures from their residues, suspending moments of liveness otherwise immaterial. She employs acts that expose bodily boundaries including hair-cutting, eating and peeling, which become a process for her to reclaim the warfare of cultural erasure and assimilation in Hong Kong and Australia. She aims to reveal slippages between the material and the corporeal to shake the boundaries between the personal and political. She currently lives and works across unceded Gadigal, Cammeraygal and Darug country.
‘Bones is an attempt to make sense of what makes my body Chinese, or not, as a Hong Kong-Australian. I will develop a non-traditional ritual to connect with my ancestor by collecting saliva and sweat in the process of feeding myself General Tso’s chicken across this residency.’
photo credit: Rebecca Mansell
Nadia Refaei
Nadia Refaei is an artist and curator based in nipaluna. Her multidisciplinary practice draws on both personal and broader histories to explore ideas around cultural dislocation and negotiation. Varied histories of familial migration have informed her interest in the relationships between migration, memory and mythology. Nadia uses installation, video and other media, as well as embodied practices like cooking and gardening, to examine these issues through the lenses of her overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, Arab- Muslim- and Greek- “Australian” identities.
‘At the moment I’m interested in informal and incidental modes of gathering and connection, and how culture and community forms in different neighbourhoods. I hope to spend my time in Naarm exploring these ideas and connecting with artists and community, sharing meals, and visiting some home gardens if I’m really lucky!’
Elyas Alavi
Elyas Alavi is an interdisciplinary artist and poet who works across painting, sculpture, performance and moving image. An Afghan-born Hazara, Alavi is interested in exploring trauma, memory, gender, sexuality, and social and political crises through his work. Alavi has exhibited nationally and internationally. He has published three poetry books in Afghanistan and Iran. Alavi’s work featured in a solo exhibition at ACE Open in 2019, the same year he received a prestigious Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship. Most recently Alavi exhibited at The Substation, Melbourne, as part of the Hyphenated Biennal 2021-22. He completed a Master of Visual Arts at the University of South Australia in 2016 and a Master of Fine Arts at Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London, in 2020.
‘During my residency I will work on a new body of work Cheshme-e Jaan (The spirit spring), including poetry and neon installation. As an extension to Hyphenated Biennial 2021-2022, this is part of my ongoing research into history of Cameleers in Australia. This new body of work will be exhibited at the TarraWarra Biennial 2023.’
Ma Ei
Ma Ei is an artist who works in photography and performance currently based in Melbourne. She was born in Dawei, Myanmar, and began her art practice in Yangon in 2002. She is particularly interested in the politics for women. She has showed her work widely including at the Asia Pacific Triennial in 2021, and she has been an artist-in-residence in Japan, Korea, India and The Netherlands.
LIMINAL X HYPHENATED PROJECTS WRITING FELLOW 2020:
Jinghua Qian
Jinghua Qian is a Shanghainese writer living in Melbourne's west, on the land of the Kulin nations. Ey has written poetry, essays, opinion and reportage for Overland, Meanjin, Sydney Morning Herald, SBS, Sixth Tone, The Lifted Brow, Popula, Cordite, and various other Australian and international publications. Jinghua founded people of colour performance night POC THE MIC (2010-2012), was a presenter and producer on 3CR Community Radio’s Queering the Air (2012-2015), and currently serves on the board of Asian-Australian arts and culture magazine Peril and the Maribyrnong City Council Arts Ambassador Committee.
Find out more about the Liminal X Hyphenated Projects Writing Fellowship here.
Truc Truong is an emerging artist living on Kaurna land (Adelaide), exploring variances between Eastern and Western thinking. Working with sculpture and installation, her work points to colonialism, exploring aspects of racism, hybridity and displacement, often through experiences and stories retold by her family.
During her residency at Hyphenated Projects, she aims to build relationships with second-generation migrants in Melbourne’s west, which she hopes to enrich her own experience and practice. Her residency also coincides with Lunar New Year, which would contribute to her ongoing research into symbolism of festivities.
New Wayfinders is a community collective that serves as a platform for aspiring, emerging, and established Oceanic diaspora artists; creating opportunities, connections, workshops, and networks within Narrm and abroad. Exploring the concepts of Soli, Si’i/Fa’alavelave, Koha and Helpim Wantok, which are all broadly cultural practices of contribution, giving, donations, offering, presents or presentations, the group is working towards a project in visual arts, weaving practice, sound and performance.
Resident artists: Yasbelle Kerkow, Aunty Vicki Kinai, Peter Lemalu and Florence Tupuola (Folole)