Nathan Beard, Isaac Chong Wai, Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Jane Jin Kaisen, Sarah Ujmaia, John Young A Moment in Extended Crisis

Nathan Beard is a multidisciplinary artist who draws from his Australian-Thai heritage to unpack the porous and precarious influences of culture and memory. In exploring the intersection of family history, archives and broad cultural signifiers of ‘Thainess’, Beard’s work articulates the complexities surrounding authenticity and diasporic identity.  
Recent exhibitions include A Puzzlement, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (2023) and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2022), Husk, Futures (2022), Low Yield Fruit, sweet pea (2022), White Gilt 2.0, Firstdraft (2020), A dense intimacy (with Lindy Lee), Bus Projects (2019) and WA Focus: Nathan Beard, Art Gallery of Western Australia (2017).  In 2022 Beard completed an Australia Council residency at ACME Studios, London. He has been a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize (2021) and the Churchie emerging art prize (2020), and participated in the 4A Beijing Studio Program (2017). He is currently participating in the Gertrude Studio Program (2023-25). He is represented by sweet pea, Boorloo/Perth, and Futures, Naarm/Melbourne. 

Isaac Chong Wai is a Hong Kong born artist based in Berlin. Through performance, video, installation, photography, and drawing, Chong’s practice integrates conceptual, political, and performative elements through an interdisciplinary approach, engaging with the urgency of societal changes and global phenomena. Chong’s works have been featured at the 22nd Biennale of Videobrasil, Sao Paulo; Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin; Bundeskunsthalle Bonn; MMCA, Seoul; IFFR, Rotterdam; MOCA Taipei; M+, Hong Kong; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; Museum Schloss Moyland; Bauhaus Museum, Weimar; ifa-Galerie, Berlin; Zilberman, Istanbul, Berlin, and Miami. His works are held in the collections of Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Burger Collection, Bundeskunstsammlung (Federal Collection of Contemporary Art) and ifa Collection, among others.  He holds a BA in Visual Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University and a MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany.

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai is a Thai transdisciplinary artist, curator and art worker, currently based in the United States. Recent projects include Stranger Intimacy I & II, at the ONE Archives at USC Libraries and USC Pacific Asia Museum (LA), REWIND: a virtual screening series, Feminist Center for Creative Work (LA), Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii, The Fulcrum Press (LA), Excerpts of Memories From the Screen, and BOOKSHOP LIBRARY, Bangkok City Gallery. They curated the MAHA Pavilion at the Bangkok Biennial 2020 and Tactics of Erasure and Rewriting Histories at Craft Contemporary in 2022 and at ReflectSpace Gallery at the Glendale Central Library in 2023. The New Commons is their online project for the 2023 Prospect Art Curatorial Fellowship. They received a Visual Arts Degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nantes Metropole, a License in Film Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, a BFA from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago, and a MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. They are a recipient of the California Arts Council 2023 Individual Artist Fellowship Award. 

Jane Jin Kaisen is a visual artist and filmmaker born in Jeju Island South Korea and living in Denmark. Kaisen’s works, spanning video installation, narrative experimental film, photographic installation, performance, and text, are informed by extensive interdisciplinary research and engagement with diverse communities. Engaging topics such as memory, migration, borders, and translation, she activates the field where lived experience and embodied knowledge intersect with larger political histories. Kaisen is a recipient of a 3-year work grant from the Danish Arts Foundation (2022) and represented Korea at the 58th Venice Biennale with the film installation Community of Parting (2019) alongside artists Hwayeon Nam and siren eun young jeong in the exhibition History Has Failed Us, but No Matter curated by Hyunjin Kim.Kaisen is a Professor at the School of Media Arts, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

Sarah Ujmaia is a first-generation Chaldean artist living and working on unceded Wurundjeri lands. Her practice is largely informed by the wide-reaching impacts of forced displacement and cultural re-writing related to the diasporic experience. Applying translational processes, she regenerates motifs, images and linguistic structures in her material-led approach to object making. Recent solo exhibitions include Marmoreum (2024), at Gertrude Contemporary, Heliomancer (2023), at ReadingRoom, Of Particle and Wave (2023), at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Stars (2022), at TCB, and Caught Between the Tongue (2021), at Sutton Projects. Ujmaia was a finalist in the Darebin Art Prize (2021) and is currently a PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Fine Art at Monash University

John Young (楊子榮) is a Hong Kong born artist who, since 1979, has had more than 80 solo exhibitions, and four survey exhibitions (including Tarrawarra Museum of Art and Drill Hall Gallery, ANU). His works have been shown in major exhibitions both in Australia and abroad, including at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and collected by the M+ Museum, Hong Kong. Young was seminal in establishing the Asian Australian Artists' Association in 1995, now the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney - a centre for the promotion of Asian philanthropy and the nurturing of Australasian artists and curators. Since 2008, he has dedicated much of his work in developing a visual history of the Chinese in Australia (1840-1967). In 2020 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the Visual Arts as a contemporary artist and painter. Young is a Trustee at the McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Victoria.

Andy Butler is an artist, writer and curator based in narrm/Melbourne. Recent independent curatorial projects include Always there and all a part (2017) at BLINDSIDE, Those Monuments Don't Know Us (2019) at Bundoora Homestead, and Steven Rhall & Sung Tieu: Statecraft (2024) at Monash University Museum of Art. Previously, he was Program Curator and Artistic Director (Acting) at West Space. His writing on art and politics has been published widely, including in frieze, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, Art + Australia, Runway, Un Projects, as well as in various exhibition publications and anthologies. As an artist, he works across video and installation. Recent exhibitions include All-in-One Solution for Glowing Fairness (2019) at Bus Projects, Before the Tonsils Stop (2019) at Firstdraft, and Collective Unease (2022) with the Ian Potter Museum of Art. In 2024, he will premiere a major new moving image commission at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. He has undertaken residencies in Manila, Jogjakarta, Auckland, Sydney and Berlin. 

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