Join NAVA, Bedelia Lowrencev, M. Sunflower & Imogen Yang for a gathering as artists, activists and arts workers living in and responding to a world in crisis, marked by ongoing genocide, biodiversity loss and climate collapse, 2-4pm AEST, Monday 2 June, Darling Square Library, Sydney.
Join NAVA, Bedelia Lowrencev, M. Sunflower & Imogen Yang for a gathering as artists, activists and arts workers living in and responding to a world in crisis, marked by ongoing genocide, biodiversity loss and climate collapse.
What to expect:
Idea Space 2, Darling Square Library,
The Exchange, Level 1,
1 Little Pier St, Haymarket NSW 2000
2-4pm AEST
Monday 2 June 2025
This workshop can host up to 20 people in person.
Hosted and funded by NAVA, with support from the City of Sydney.
Free. Refreshments provided.
To register, please click the register button below.
Alternatively, you may also contact us in the format that works best for you:
Contact details outlined under the Contact section.
This event will be Auslan interpreted.
We’re committed to making this event safe and comfortable. Please let us know:
Venue notes:
Can’t make it? Let us know so we can plan future workshops.
This workshop has been co-designed and will be co-facilitated by independent artists/arts workers:
M. Sunflower is a culturally diverse Australian artist with disabilities. A descendant of the Warmuli people of the Dharug Nation; Lebanese post-Palestinian-War migrants; Chinese gold-rush era immigrants and a UK convict, M. Sunflower embodies the diverse ancestral legacy of Australia’s painful and complex colonial past. Her practice is interdisciplinary including drawing; painting; sculpture; photography; video; fashion; installation; workshops; and community care. A believer in art as activism, she fights for human rights for all, bringing visibility to concepts related to disability; ancestral and intergenerational trauma; and intersectional marginalisation.
M. Sunflower is currently serving as Access and Diversity Advisor to Firstdraft; Access Advisor with Accessible Arts; Advisory Group Member for the Inclusive Arts Project with National Ethnic Disability Alliance; and is a Peer Assessor for Creative Australia. She has previously served as Co-Director at Firstdraft; Peer Assessor for Bundanon and UTS Library; and is founder and curator of Off The Wall Gallery.
She is currently in residence at Parramatta Artist Studios Granville; recently exhibited in Antivenom: Year of the Snake at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art; installed a Store Takeover at Cement Fondu; held Djirang workshops at The Art Gallery of NSW; and is exhibiting in the upcoming Bone Drift: Chimeric Conversations Exhibition at Bankstown Arts Centre.
Bedelia (they/she) is a groovy disabled actor, dancer, singer, agitator, theatre maker, producer and Access Coordinator, living and working on Wategoro and Wangal Land. Bedelia frequently collaborates with their Deaf twin Jeremy, as facilitators and explorers of queerness, disability and deafness. Bedelia has a keen interest in communal care, story sovereignty, reciprocity and advocacy in their arts practice. In particular, challenging the western gaze on body, community and identity, and the reclamation of CALD queerness, and relation to land. Most recently, Bedelia acted in the new short film 'With Love, Lottie' and was awarded Best Emerging Performer at the Sydney Mardi Gras Film Festival. Previously, Bedelia acted with Bus Stop Films in 'Screen Me', Assistant Produced Raghav Handa’s THE ASSEMBLY at Campbelltown Arts Centre, performed SOFT PLACES at the Sydney Biennale, Griffin Studio Resident, and was Access Coordinator at Performance Space for Liveworks, and Co-Program Coordinator: Access at Sydney Fringe Festival. Currently, Bedelia is cracking into their disabled musical spenanza with Wear It Purple, prepping for a workshop for DADA Fest in Liverpool with Amy Claire Mills, is lead creative in the Move Series at the Art Gallery of NSW, and is a Program Coordinator at Accessible Arts.
Imogen Yang is an independent collaborative arts practitioner in intercultural and equitable arts practice. Working closely with individual artists, communities and organisations, across short and long term projects, with a commitment to engaged rights-based arts practice as activism, and a focus on social, environmental & disability justice, health equity, and human rights issues.
In solidarity with Indigenous people everywhere resisting colonisation, racism and oppression. Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) is a Membership organisation that brings together the many voices of the contemporary arts sector to improve fundamental conditions of work and practice. We do this through advocacy, education and the Code of Practice. For further information on NAVA visit www.visualarts.net.au.
'Rhizome - Ancestral Landscapes'
An “Ancestral Landscape”, evoking the intricate patterns and fractals woven throughout nature - from the tiniest cellular level to the infinite cosmos.
There is a profound interconnectedness that repeats across scale and time, nesting in a fractal that spirals ever outwards in the eternal dance of “IS”. Biological patterns in viruses, petri dishes and medical science; the sweeping vistas of aerial photography and mapping; and ever outwards to fathomless galactic enormity.
Ngurra. Country.
Badu. Water.
Daramu. Tree.
Ngayana. Breathe.
Take a deep breath. Ngayana. Breathe.
What sounds do you hear? Ngara. Listen.
What scents can you sense? Gana. Smell.
What does the wind feel like on your skin? Gura. Wind.
What do the leaves feel like as you slide your fingers across them? Djirang. Leaves.
Take another deep breath. Ngayana. Breathe.
Feel the sunlight on your skin. Guwing. Sun.
Listen to the water lap against the banks of the lake. Badu. Water.
Can you hear the birds call? Binyang. Bird.
These are our Ancestral Landscapes.
Complex. Shifting. Deep threads weaving into the earth like Rhizomes.
Though the word rhizome is derived from a Greek word meaning “to take root”, the rhizome is not about the common tree structure whose branches have all grown from a single trunk.
Rhizome subverts such traditional hierarchies.
Rhizome offers liberation from these structures of power and dominance.
Rhizome has no beginning, no centre and no end.
Rhizome can be entered from any point, and all points are connected.
When injured or broken at one site, rhizome simply forms a new connection that emerges elsewhere.
Rhizome is not about what is or what was, but about what might be.
To quote Deleuze and Guattari: 'The surface can be interrupted and moved, but these disturbances leave no trace, as the water is charged with pressure and potential to always seek its equilibrium, and thereby establish smooth space.' "
'Rhizome - Ancestral Landscapes' is an affirmation for change. For peace. For resilience. For healing.
Growth and connection are not linear, but expansive, fluid and liberated. By viewing this piece, you become part of my Rhizome, empowered with its ethos of resilience, possibility and transformation. Use it as protection - a call to the deep power within all to resist, reconnect and repair.
Revolution!
Relief.
This project is supported by City of Sydney.
NAVA acknowledges and pays respects to the Gadigal people, the rightful custodians of the lands where this event will be held. We recognise all Custodians of Country throughout all lands, waters and territories, and pay respect to First Nations communities' ancestors and Elders. Sovereignty was never ceded.
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