Hoang Tran Nguyen and Sebastian Henry-Jones in conversation with Leila Doneo Baptist on 3CR’s breakfast show. The trio discuss Hoang’s major commission House of Mother Tongue, House of Other Tongue, presented across West Space and Footscray Community Arts.
Hoang Tran Nguyen is an artist working in social practice to address overlapping cultural histories, politics of place and the role of the art-worker. His work has featured in self-initiated projects (Bilo Artspace, fauxPho), arts festivals (Due West, Big West, Next Wave) and galleries (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Buxton Contemporary, The Substation). He is currently a PhD candidate at the Victorian College of the Arts (University of Melbourne).
Leila Doneo Baptist is an undisciplined artist with Asian-Middle Eastern-Australian ancestry, who grew up on Djugun-Yawuru land in Western Australia. Their work is informed by dispersed mixed-race histories with a focus on creative practice as an opportunity for relational connection, decolonial healing and what it means to be speaking from a settler-immigrant positionality on stolen land. Leila currently lives and works in Naarm-Melbourne.
Sebastian Henry-Jones is a curator led by an interest in DIY thinking. He looks to centre the ideas and requirements of those that he works with, and so his practice is informed by striving for a personal ethics with sincerity, honest communication, learning and poetry at its core.