Intro: The National Association for the Visual Arts is the peak body protecting and promoting the professional interests of the Australian visual arts. NAVA in conversation is a series exploring the issues and challenges of working in the sector. We speak with artists, curators and administrators to gain insight into the experiences of contemporary practice and seek to propose ideas for change, progress, and resilience in both local and global contexts. Tanushri Saha: I would like to begin by acknowledging that this podcast is recorded on the unceded sovereign lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. I pay respect to elders past, present, and future. Creativity and knowledge sharing and cultural production has a more than 70,000-year history on this land. And we're really privileged to be a part of that sharing today. My name is Tanushri Saha and I'm a membership and communications coordinator at the National Association for the Visual Arts. Today I'm joined with Santilla Chingaipe a journalist, filmmaker and author who exposed politics, migration, and cultural identity in her work. Santilla, welcome and thank you for being with us today. Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do? Santilla Chingaipe: Yeah, thanks for having me, Tanushri. I, as you mentioned, I'm a filmmaker, I'm a journalist, I am an author. Yeah, I sometimes curate public events, like public conversations around the very themes that you mentioned, around issues to do with cultural identities, migration and politics. My area of work is quite broad and I work across a bunch of different mediums, which I find interesting. And it keeps me busy. Tanushri Saha: And what kind of practices sustain you? Santilla Chingaipe: Ooh, that's a really, really good question. This might seem like a really odd answer, but rage is a really big motivator for me. And it's the reason for the majority of my work and what I choose to focus on and what I choose to create, because I focus on issues to do with cultural identities, politics, and migration. It's not hard to be angry about a lot of things that are going wrong societally and trying to figure out how my own work seeks to inform citizens in a democracy about some of these issues and some of the failures in policy. Yeah, so that's kind of what sustains me. I'm not sure if that's the answer you were looking for, but that's certainly what's the truth in my case. Tanushri Saha: No, there's no wrong answers at all. And I totally understand. It feels like sometimes every day there's something really awful in the news and it's easy to be angry and yeah, absolutely [crosstalk 00:03:08]. Santilla Chingaipe: And that's how you channel that anger. I think when I was younger, I was very reactionary with my energy and with my anger, because everything, I mean you see things on social media and you're outraged and you spend so much energy reacting to whatever the crazy thing that's being said and trying to reason with people sometimes that don't want to reason with you. And I found that to be really depleting of my energy and also not really seeing any shifts in change. And because I saw it from a journalism base and journalism apart from being in public service, one of the things that you'd hope from your work is to impact policy in some way, shape or form by bringing certain issues to the attention of the public. Santilla Chingaipe: And it's something that I still consider a desired outcome for my work across the board is that I would like to see impacts on policy for the greater good, and after feeling the burnout from just constantly reacting to all the stuff I realised, I was like, “Well, I'm not going to stop being angry because it's just who I am.” And it's hard to look away from injustices and not just injustices here, tremendous justices around the world because I think the American academic, Dr. Cornel West says, he says, “You don't want to be well adjusted to injustice.” And I think that it's so true. You don't ever want to get to a point where you're comfortable with the fact that other human beings are suffering and so it's like, “Okay, how do I constructively use that anger and rage and funnel it into my practice?” Santilla Chingaipe: And so now a lot of my work is very much long term stuff for that reason, which is part of the reason why it's a lot harder in many ways because it's more demanding, but I feel that it is more fulfilling for me in many ways, because I get to spend a bit more time doing the things that I really, really genuinely love, but it also allows me to really interrogate the very systems that continue to oppress groups of people, and then communicate those back to audiences through the various mediums that I work in and let them make up their mind on that particular issue and decide what to do because we live in a democracy and people have had the choice to be informed and make that choice about how they then go forward with their lives based on that information. Santilla Chingaipe: But that's kind of how my own practice has kind of shifted over the years, if that makes any sense from feeling like I constantly had to be making work that was reacting to every single thing versus to now where it's really about long-term, very, very slow, lots of like incredibly time consuming, but I feel is perhaps a bit more effective in hopefully bringing about some of the changes that I hope I get to see in my lifetime. Tanushri Saha: Absolutely. Could you give me some examples of the ways that you've challenged that rage in the past or recently in your work? Santilla Chingaipe: Yeah. A really good example is I'm writing a history book at the moment, and this came about, I'd spent a lot of years reporting on the racialised crime narratives here in Victoria specifically targeted around indigenous and black communities. And it sort of all hit its crescendo probably around 2018 when there was the so-called African gangs crisis. Like I said, I'd spent almost a decade at that point of my career highlighting why it was problematic to emphasise people's rights when you report on them, but also how racialized narratives impact communities and those consequences that come from the irresponsibility of the coverage and how in many ways it's incredibly unethical as well. Santilla Chingaipe: And I just found that it still wasn't cutting through. I don't quite know how many ways I can say the same thing and nothing's really changing. I realised that part of the racialised narrative was this argument that was being made, not just by commentators, but by politicians as well, that there was something inherently difficult about black people that made it difficult for them to integrate, was one of the arguments. Santilla Chingaipe: And that argument itself is racist because obviously no one is inherently anything because of the colour of their skin. But I also began my practice from a fact-based, evidence-based purge. And so I knew that if I could find evidence that historically showed that black people, by black people in this context I'm talking about people of African diaspora descent, had been in Australia for a long time and not just the contemporary examples that are drawn to sort of justify these narratives, then perhaps it would challenge these. And it would show that this is incredibly racist and that the reason why these communities are struggling compared to others is because of failure of government policy and supporting newly arrived groups that are settling in the country. And we know that that's happening because they've been successive budget cuts in terms of the settlement services. Santilla Chingaipe: I sort of thought, "Okay, how do you bring evidence into the debate?" And I'd heard about stories of black convicts that were transported to the Australian colonies. And I got a bit of a grant and a fellowship from the State Library of Victoria to do some early research, looking at some to if I could find anything and I did. I found overwhelming evidence that people of African descent were transported here from the beginning of the transportation period right up until the end. And so that is now turning into a book and a documentary both scheduled to come out next year, but those were sort of the long-term way of thinking about how do you challenge some of these. But also not necessarily challenging because again, countering every single racialised narrative, you'd never be able to do it in your lifetime. Santilla Chingaipe: And I think there's a great Toni Morrison quote about racism being a distraction and it really is. It's not even about countering those narratives. It's just about saying that, “If we are going to be having these conversations, let's talk about it truthfully. Let's not lie and claim to be one thing when the documents themselves tell us something else.” That's one recent example that I can give you that where my practices shifted from the immediate reaction to thinking about the long-term goals of shifting or pushing the needle forward a little bit. Tanushri Saha: The global attention that has surrounded the Black Lives Matter Movement in recent weeks, following the tragic death of George Floyd has forced people all over the world to reckon with these injustices of the legal system towards black and indigenous people, particularly in relation to police brutality. But it's also important to recognise that these injustices towards black people are also echoed here in this country here on Aboriginal land. We see these injustices towards indigenous people in the legal system, but also on a broader societal level in the communities where amongst in politics like you have mentioned, in the industries we work in, in the pop culture and media we consume, really everywhere. Tanushri Saha: And these aren't new conversations, but they have become more prominent in recent weeks. Attention around Black Lives Matter is inspiring many industries to look within and to do better. I want to talk about what it means to reckon with the fact that black lives do and should matter within the arts specifically, and also where change begins. If art is a critical part of leading cultural discourse and envisioning how the world might look and be differently, how do we make meaningful change within the arts when it comes to injustice towards black and indigenous folk? Santilla Chingaipe: I think it begins with the acknowledgement that racism exists. I think one of the challenges, and also this is also one of the reasons why I'm writing this book is, we have a long history of denialism. We like to think that what's happening overseas is not happening here, that systemic racism doesn't exist. It does. It is in every part of our society. Institutionalised racism is across every sector in every industry you just have to look at the data and it absolutely shows you that some groups are advantaged over others disproportionately. That is racism. I think we're so terrified of the word racism. And therefore what ends up happening is that we dance around these issues and use language like diversity, which I'm not a big fan of as a way of kind of going, “Yeah, we can see that people that aren't white haven't been represented.” Santilla Chingaipe: And it's like, “It's not even just about the representation in terms of whether it's artists. It's also about in cultural institutions, it's about who's curating these spaces.” We're talking about public spaces most of the time where people are entering from different walks of life, with different experiences, and these spaces should be reflective of the experiences of people within a multicultural country. And we are a multicultural country. And we begin with the acknowledgement that even before settlement it really was multicultural because we know that indigenous communities were incredibly multicultural and diverse within themselves. Santilla Chingaipe: So that history stretches back thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And then when you add the modern history, when you add settlement, when you add newer waves of migration, it just solidifies that argument. But you very rarely see this when you go into some of these public spaces and don't see the level of context that needs to come into this work and in the Australian context, that really does matter. I think that level of inquiry, particularly within the art space is really lacking. And that comes from having that diverse representation at all levels not just through the people creating the art to people curating the spaces, it's the conversations that are being had. It's how do you encourage younger generations of artists who feel excluded? Again, some of these industries for a very long time have excluded groups of people and not just across race or gender or sexuality, but across class as well. Santilla Chingaipe: And it's how do you ensure that the sector continues to ensure that there is a retention rate across the diverse spectrum of human beings? I don't think we've been doing that great of a job, to be honest. I think that the unique individual examples where some institutions have been doing that work and have been doing it quite well, but I also think that the work doesn't rest on, and I think this is what's happened for a really, really long time. And I know this because it's a responsibility that I took on, was having to be the person teaching people about racism. I curated an anti-racism series just to be able to have these conversations and to be able to sort of use evidence, use data to really talk about what's at the heart of the issue. Santilla Chingaipe: But then you get to a point where you sort of like how much longer do you have to carry that labor of educating, and you're still not being met halfway or institutions are reluctant to take on that change. And it's almost as though people are just happy with things being business as usual. You talked about how the Black Lives Matter Movement, which at the heart of it, apart from spotlighting police brutality and the criminal justice system, at the coral Black Lives Matter Movement is institutionalised racism and how do we begin to dismantle the ways in which it impacts black people and indigenous people. Dismantling that begins with acknowledging that racism exists. We can no longer be in denial of that and looking at how institutions overseas and artists and arts workers are reckoning with this moment has been truly incredibly inspiring, something I didn't think I'd see in my lifetime in many ways. Santilla Chingaipe: And then to sort of see the response here, it's just been extraordinary. It's like living in two different worlds. Some institutions have come out and said something, others haven't. Everyone's doing the solidarity black square, but not actually really reckoning with what that means when they are part of the problem, like not seeing themselves complicit. It's like this weird out of body experience that is going on. I don't know what that's going to look like long-term because I really don't know what it's going to look like here and I'm not optimistic it's going to bring about long-term tangible change because there's just a lot that would have to be reckoned with. I think that a lot of people in gate keeping positions that aren't unwilling to acknowledge some of the systemic failures that are happening. Tanushri Saha: Sure. I totally agree in that we have a lot of reckoning to do. And like you said, acknowledgement of the fact of racism in our sectors, institutionally is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm particularly interested in what you were saying about curation. Eva Frieze is a black curator for Frieze in the UK. And she has this really great quote about the need for more black curators, art historians, and gallerists to be able to recontextualise the narratives that have kind of permeated through the industry to really amplify voices and address how she says black bodies trapped in white imaginations and I think. Curation is about storytelling and it's so important to have people at all levels, being able to tell their own stories, whatever they may look like. I just think that's so important. Santilla Chingaipe: And that's how racism continues to exist because if you don't have that contextualisation, we continue to when you tell a singular side of the story and that singular side of the story maintains white superiority and ensures that all other groups sit on the margins of that and that the default position is always whiteness and whiteness here I'm talking about it as a construct itself. I'm not talking about it as skin colour. And so you can see how within these institutions, if there isn't any of that reckoning, you can continue to just perpetuate the same problems of the past. These things have to be interrogated. Again, I'm using the example of the history book because that's just something that I'm working on at the moment and it's something that I know quite a bit about. Santilla Chingaipe: But even going back into the archives and looking at colonial Australian history, from the perspective as a black woman, who's part of the African diaspora to tell the stories of black people of the African diaspora that were transported here in a way one, because these stories have never been told before, but to place them within the context that the reader recognises that there is a lot more to the story than how you understand it and how you read it and ensures that hopefully going forward in the contemporary sense, there was a better understanding of some of those complexities, but that isn't lost on me on the fact that it took the perspective of someone like me that happened to be black to help recontextualise a part of our history. Does that make any sense? Tanushri Saha: Absolutely. Santilla Chingaipe: I'll tell you these stories have been there for a very long time. It's not like they haven't been there. It's not like they haven't been other historians that have looked at some of these stories, but they've never sat in context. They've never sat in also just humanising their experiences. And that's a very, very important thing because when you're telling generations of young people that are growing up in this country who don't happen to be white, that their stories don't matter, that their narratives aren't as important or that they are somehow problematic because of whatever lies we keep telling ourselves, whether it's through television, through books, through art, through whatever context we use to perpetuate the same narratives that show non-life bodies as other, as in some way less than, we keep making the same mistakes. Santilla Chingaipe: And we keep having children that are growing up in a country, having a very, very different experience to other kids which in itself is incredibly unfair because children should have the right to grow up and to fill their fullest potential without these barriers that are holding them back and barriers, by the way, that are created by human beings. These aren't real barriers, but they do impact the lives of young people and they do impact the lives of children. And it's incredibly problematic. And I think that the unwillingness in many ways to really, really look at what's, the heart of this is, is really, really frustrating. It's really, really frustrating because I don't know why the reluctance is there. Like I said, I don't know if it's because people don't want to talk about racism because racism feels like a loaded word and it is. There's no dancing around the fact. It's uncomfortable. Santilla Chingaipe: It's not a nice thing to talk about it because we're talking about not just the racism, but the ways in which racism as a power structure continues to ensure that across economic, social and political systems, some groups of people are being left out. And when we see it. It's a consistent thing and it's disproportionately impacting some groups over others. And that is what we were talking about. And it's like, how do we start fixing this? But that quote that you shared, it just goes to the heart of it. It really is about that context. And we rarely ever get the other side's perspective. It's always, if this is a perspective of something, then that's just how it is. And we accepted as though it is fact, and that's very, very worrying. Santilla Chingaipe: That's very, very worrying. I think there are multiple ways of looking at something and art spaces should be anything, the place where we allow for this kind of interrogation and inquiry where we can sort of go, “Hang on, there probably is another way that we can look at this. How we situate this within a historical context?” And here I'm not talking about censorship because sometimes this conversation ends up going to a place where people think that might be calling for censorship and that's not what it is. It's just sort of going that there is a place of thinking about ideas in a way that isn't perhaps considered. And that is the value of having a perspective that comes from a different lived experience. Tanushri Saha: Yeah. I see what you're saying. In this creative sector, I think for black lives to matter, and for us to fully understand what that means, black stories have to matter, black art and ideas and narratives have to mater. And you're right, it's not a question of censorship. It's about reframing the narrative in a more empowering way. And in one that diverts from that colonial legacy that has informed how black people have been represented for more than 200 years in the case of Australia. Santilla Chingaipe: And also of like, you touched on something about black art being equally important. And that's something that I always think about as well within my own work. I always think about the challenge of being a creative that is nonwhite, is that there's this expectation that when you make work, people have to look at it from a cultural lens or from a cultural perspective, which is incredibly unfair because it's sort of like, “Why can't I just make work that's treated like everyone else's work?” My perspective is different because it's shaped by my lived experience. I grew up traveling a lot. I have friends from all walks of life. I travel a lot to this day. I live in the most culturally diverse neighbourhood in Victoria. I've got a studio in my neighbourhood. Every time I go out to work at my studio, I am literally like encountering about at least 20 different cultures, languages, experiences. Santilla Chingaipe: And that's just in my daily walk. And so the way I'm looking at the world within the Australian context is being shaped by that. And naturally my work will reflect that, but there's almost this thing as though my work has to be treated very differently because I'm coming, and I find all that stuff to be incredibly problematic. In some ways quite racist as well, because I'm sort of like, “Well, I am making work just like everyone else. I would like my work to be treated just like everyone else's work.” It just so happens that my work is reflective of my lived experience, but it doesn't mean that there was no universality to it. And it's that denial of that, that also is quite problematic. Santilla Chingaipe: That if you are a nonwhite creator that somehow you can't speak to the universal experience of everyone else and that you only speak to the experiences of people that look like you. Whereas white creators have that privilege, have the privilege to create work that could speak to everyone's experience and who aren't interrogated. No one says … I remember when I worked as a journalist, I was often criticised for focusing a lot on marginalised communities and those stories, as though it was a bad thing. I remember once saying to someone just after this criticism just was increasing, I said, “No one ever says to white journalists, ‘You only just telling white stories.' I don't understand why it's problematic when I choose to reflect the world that is presenting to me, but yet we don't ask the same questions of white curators. We don't say why.” Santilla Chingaipe: Do you know what I mean? I just sort of think that it's all a level playing field, again, back to institutional racism and how it manifests itself. It's not a level playing field in so many ways. And so you have artists of colour, indigenous artists, black artists who are having to carry this burden of their work being seen as equal as worthy and not just subjected to a corner somewhere where it's seen through an ethnic lens or whatever it is, that context is almost as though that's the only way your work can be read. All that sort of stuff, it takes away from the joy of the process of creating work because you have to be thinking about these sorts of things and other people don't, and they get the freedom to just create whatever it is that they want to create. Santilla Chingaipe: I would just hope that in generations to come, a lot of young people from my backgrounds are burdened by some of this stuff. That they can just create because they want to, whatever it is, without the expectation that they have to either speak to the cultural context or that whatever it is that they choose to make is interpreted through a cultural context because sometimes that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes people just want to make whatever it is that they want to make. Tanushri Saha: Yeah. Certainly shouldn't have to be hyper embodied in a way that certain people are afforded the privilege of not having to be when they make work. What sorts of things can creative institutions do better to support black and indigenous artists? Santilla Chingaipe: There's a lot, and there's a lot of work being done in this space that I feel that there are others that can speak with a bit more authority about this. I know because like I said, I curated an anti-racism series here in Melbourne for the Wheeler Center a couple of years ago called Not Racist Sport. And part of that series involved me speaking to a lot of academics and experts that work in the anti-racism space who do have the solutions, who know what people should be doing, who know what institutions should be doing. And my advice, if any, would be to turn to these authorities and to listen to some of the solutions and suggestions that they have. I think that there are models here as well, that seem to be working where these issues have been considered. Santilla Chingaipe: I find that a lot of smaller institutions, have been doing a better job because they've been, I guess having to be part of a community in a way that's very different to bigger institutions, has forced us reckoning early on. For some of the smaller institutions, they've been thinking about this for a while and have put in place practices that seem to be working quite well. I think that there are examples in that regard and as everyone else has been saying, “There's lots of reading, lots of listening to be done, and it never stops because we're talking about racism in itself.” Now, this is a power structure that's been around for just over 400 years. Dismantling something so powerful and something that was imported here as well, because racism was imported it's going to take a very, very long time. It's not going to be overnight. Santilla Chingaipe: And it is something that people have to be aware of, is that you can put measures in place, but there has to be acknowledgement that there has to be some kind of regular reform or mechanism by which you assess the progress that's being made. It's not just, you put something in place and you sort of go, “Okay, now we've done our bit so, okay.” It doesn't work that way. When you think about the support that's required, it's long-term work. It's long-term stuff. And it really requires strong leadership to really invest in that. Again, when you think about the KPIs and things, the targets people have to hit, it makes it very, very difficult fit in that long term structure of work needs to be done to ensure better outcomes in the future. But for the leaders that are willing to take that on, it definitely will be a worthwhile investment because those are the benefits that will be reaped in a few generations from now because of those steps. And so, yeah. Tanushri Saha: Let's talk about social media for a moment. Recently we've seeing the removal of posts by black activists on Instagram and Facebook under the guise of community guidelines. We've seen social media influences wearing blackface in quite a confused attempt at solidarity or some kind of solidarity and sharing of the work of black artists without proper credit or acknowledgement. There's also been the Blackout Tuesday initiated within the music industry, which was meant to be a day of reflecting on anti-black racism and the effects of racism in society. But unfortunately took a turn on Instagram where users posted black squares using the #blacklivesmatter, which really made seeking vital information on the movement of real time updates on protests incredibly difficult. I guess there's a question there of what better and more nuanced solidarity looks like on the internet, but also a question of, well, what can we do to better amplify the work of black and indigenous artists, both in the physical world, but also in the online sphere? Santilla Chingaipe: I'm probably not a really good person to talk about [inaudible 00:31:18] with because one, I'm a really bad user of social media. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter, for example. I'm not tapped into some of those conversations. I did see the black squares and there'd been a lot of people, I think there are a lot of activists that are quite vocal, who have spoken about and written about why that was problematic. And you just spoke to some of the things that you raised as well. I see all of this stuff as a good thing like obviously there's a lot that is incredibly problematic and needs to be dealt with. I don't know what channels are the best way because at the moment we don't even have like a little regulatory body for the internet really, or that regulates some of these social media companies. Santilla Chingaipe: So, that's probably going be one of the first places that I would start is calling for greater regulation around some of these social media companies. And that just goes to things like privacy and all that sort of stuff. But in terms of what individuals were sharing from just generally, and I'm treading very carefully here because like I said, a lot of it has been incredibly problematic, but generally I have thought it's been a good thing that these conversations have been happening. And the reason why I say, I think it's a good thing because like I said, I've been working in this anti-racism space for a very, very long time. And you feel like you're just banging your head against the wall and people just genuinely don't care. And to wake up one day and to see people that you didn't even know though and knew what racism meant, outside of the understanding of racism, all of a sudden engaging. Santilla Chingaipe: If their level of engagement was as little as a black square to other people who were posting about how to be a better ally and things like that, I thought it was a good thing that people weren't being in different. I think I'd be more worried if this movement had just gone by without being picked up by the usual people that are talking about this sort of stuff and trying to bring this to the public's attention. In that sense, I think it's been quite encouraging to see that people are engaging and obviously people, they will be missteps because we're navigating a space that I don't think we have navigated before. This is a movement that's not just happening in rural life. It's also happening online. The way in which it's happened and the way it's galvanised communities across the world has been incredible. Santilla Chingaipe: Again, I would say that I'm probably not the best person to be speaking with some level of authority on this because just I'm not tapped in enough on the online space and what that kind of engagement looks like. I think that in terms of institutions, with a lot of Australian institutions, I noticed that some of them were a little bit late to addressing some of these concerns. I think that a lot of citizens had expressed their frustration and anger here, and a lot of this was being overlooked. And I think that some institutions overlook the power of social media and the power that sometimes people want to feel like they're being heard. And that was a bit of a missed opportunity for some institutions who were quiet because in this context, silence was seen as being complicit. And so you look at how that's happened. Santilla Chingaipe: I saw, one of my favourite institutions is the Studio Museum in Harlem and just how that is just so embedded into the community and the fabric of the community in Harlem. Reading their statement after that because all of their work is rooted in anti-racism and centring blackness. This was a space that they are very knowledgeable in and reading their statement after and this solidarity with the community and their support and also just sort of acknowledging the pain that the committee was feeling. It was just such a well put together statement that I just sort of thought, “Here's an institution that gets what's going on. And that is so tapped into these issues that this doesn't feel like it's a flippant kind of response or it's a PR move or it's whatever other motivations other institutions have done.” Yeah, it's a difficult one. And I don't know if I've answered your question. Tanushri Saha: I guess that brings us towards the end of this episode. Santilla, I would love if you could leave us with a couple of black artists who are on your radar at the moment for us to watch out for, follow and support. Santilla Chingaipe: Yeah. Here in Australia? Tanushri Saha: It can be here in Australia. It can be abroad. Santilla Chingaipe: Yeah, okay. I'll start with a curator. I think this curator is amazing. She's an up and coming young indigenous curator based here in Melbourne. And she does a lot of stuff with the Footscray Community Arts Centre. Her name is Rosie Kalina and she has co-created Blak to the Future. There was another iteration of the exhibition that was supposed to scheduled for some time this year, but COVID has happened, so it's been pushed back. She's incredibly exciting, empowering. She's so tapped into just what the concerns of young people. The work is incredibly political and so pertinent through the times and reflective of the times. And it's just so exciting to see so many young Aboriginal Torres Islander artists under her curation, really speaking to some of the issues that are impacting their communities and using the art to do so. Santilla Chingaipe: I have loved following her and seeing her grow. I just hope that she keeps getting bigger and better and just takes on the world. In terms of artists, I am inspired by visual artist and photographer, [Atona Tim 00:37:06]. She is someone that I've collaborated with, but whose work just greatly inspires my work. She's also based here in Melbourne and is just incredible. I'm inspired by another young artist called [Pier Mkeba 00:37:19]. He's also a black artist based in Albany as well. I'm a big fan of Ramesh Nithiyendran based in Sydney. His work is just out of this world. He's so talented. You've got Shireen Taweel, who's also an amazing liberty Australian artist. Just Claudia Nicholson also. Santilla Chingaipe: There's so many young artists, Aboriginal artists, black artists, South Asian, Southeast Asian just making work that is just so exciting that is placing Australia in a global context, which is such a wonderful theme. And it's boundary pushing work. A lot of these young people are doing this work without a lot of institutional support, which in itself is incredibly extraordinary because we all know that, especially when you're starting out it's a lot money in making art. And so for them to be able to do these and make incredibly pertinent work, I'm just so inspired. I really look at their practice and I go, “Wow. I can't believe that some of this stuff is being made in this country.” Yeah, I would just like to see more of that. Obviously those young people being supported and institutions supporting them and ensuring that there's another generations coming up behind them as well, that continue to make this incredible work. Santilla Chingaipe: For a while there it was not very inspiring in many ways, but now I can tell you, especially with the circles that I'm moving in and the young people that I spend a lot of time with, there are some truly, truly talented young people that are coming through that are making incredible, incredible work. And so those are the people that I would check out their work and support them and support their exhibitions. A few of them have some on at the moment virtually through the galleries that represent them. Santilla Chingaipe: Yeah, I would say that I think with a lot of this, with the conversation around institutional racism, I think one of the biggest arguments is that there's not enough nonwhite artists or not enough nonwhite creators. And it's like, “No, they're there. They're there. You just aren't doing enough work to find them. Yeah. And you're not supporting them.” They're definitely there and they're doing them. I've just mentioned, I don't know, five, six people already. I could keep going, but I think that other people should do their homework and seek more out. Yeah. I think it's an exciting time. As depressing and frustrating as things are at the moment, it's also a very exciting time because there is this generation that's coming up that is just so empowered in a way that I haven't seen before. And it's not just through the art industry, but it's through activism. Santilla Chingaipe: And you touched on the online space and just how they're using social media and online to really galvanise amongst communities and organise and strategise and plan. And it's incredibly inspiring. I'm like, “This is amazing.” And that is what really excited me about the future, that we've got these young leaders that are really stepping up and fighting for what they believe is right, what they believe is just in their communities and for their communities. And I gain a lot of inspiration from them. I just hope that they continue to be supported to keep doing the thing, because they are the future and they're just inspiring. Yeah. Tanushri Saha: Thank you so much for joining us today, Santilla. It's really been a pleasure to chat with you today about where this conversation starts in the sector in relation to anti-racism, what some of the practical things institutions can be doing and really how we shift the change. Thank you so much for being with us today to talk about those things. Santilla Chingaipe: Got you. Thank you so much for having me, Tanushri. I think these are important conversations and it does start with conversations. I know that sometimes it gets a bit tiring and all of that, but there is power in talking about these things and ensuring that the dialogue doesn't stop, that we keep having them. I really thank you for this and I thank you for the space to have this conversation. Yeah. Thank you. Tanushri Saha: Head to our website, visualarts.net.au for more information on NAVA's advocacy and campaigns for improving the working environment for Australian artists and arts organisations.