What’s your background?

I was born and have lived in Melbourne (on the unceded sovereign lands of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Eastern Kulin Nation) my whole life. I am part of the Chinese diaspora: my parents migrated to Australia from Singapore in the 1970s for work and to raise their three kids. Because my father was a doctor, they were able to settle here despite the racist, anti-Asian ‘White Australia Policy’ at the time.

What influences you artistically?

My work is hugely influenced by big questions and conundrums I grapple with in life: how to live within systems (patriarchy, petro-capitalism, colonialism) I don’t agree with, but nevertheless am part of. I’m interested in intersectional feminism as a methodology to make space for both dialogue and difference: and the frame of art and art-making as a space for people of all genders, ages, sexualities, ethnicities and abilities to encounter each other as co-conspirators and collaborators across difference. I’m also inspired by the work of other artists who I see my work in a contemporary dialogue with: Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Tehching Hsieh, Megan Cope (Quandamooka), and Hoda Afshar to name a few.

How do you start a new work?

By researching, reading, writing, conversing and visiting or responding to specific architectures, sites and people.

What are you working on right now?

With my company APHIDS, I am leading a project called EASY RIDERS, a performance work and accompanying film that explores work, precarity and the physical body in the digital age. The work comes out of a long-term collaboration with a group of on-demand or ‘gig’ workers who ride, drive, deliver and work for Silicon Valley platforms here in Melbourne. It’s a work that tries to frame the personal and globalised experience of contemporary work through an artistic lens; and the similarities and vast differences between the experience of art-workers and platform-economy workers.