Closing Night: BANQUET

Lara Chamas is a Lebanese artist, based in Naarm (Melbourne), fleeing from civil war, her parents migrated to Australia, where she was born. Her practice investigates topics of postcolonial and migrant narratives within the context of her cultural identity. Using narrative and experience documentation, storytelling, transgenerational trauma and memory and tacit knowledge; her research intends to explore links and meeting points between narrative theory, cultural practice, current political and societal tensions, and the body as a political vessel.

mohamed chamas spatializes inner realms, inspirited by the ‘dijital djinni’, a conduit for expression in digital media arts. Defying and responding to the military-entertainment complex, mohamed reenchants cyberspace by drawing on their relation to personal lineage and wider contexts of magickal and divinatory practices in ancient Islamicate regions. This dis/entangles as image, sound, poetry, virtual reality (VR), installation, performance and hybrid-corrupt forms. mohamed has exhibited at Testing Grounds, Seventh Gallery, Trocadero Art Space, Incinerator Gallery and MARS Gallery, with their literary work appearing in Running Dog, Emerging Writers Festival, Co- Magazine, The Lifted Brow, Liminal Magazine and Cordite Poetry Review.

Tigest Girma is an Ethiopian writer based in Melbourne, Australia. After graduating with a Bachelor of Education, she splits her time between writing and teaching. Passionate about exploring East African characters and myths, her work weaves Black stories with the dark and fantastical. In her free time, she can be found rewatching her comfort shows where the villain gets the girl. She invites you to visit her at tigestgirma.com or tiktok.com/tigestgirma. Immortal Dark is her debut novel.

Dr Carissa Lee is a Noongar actor and writer born on Wemba-Wemba country.
Carissa’s writing has featured in The Guardian, Witness Performance, Australasian Drama Studies, Red Room Poetry, The Saturday Paper, Junkee, and The Conversation. Carissa is currently a commissioning editor at IndigenousX, while completing an Indigenous Research fellowship at Swinburne University.

Previously awarded the 30 Under 30 LGBTIQ+ Leaders in Australia, Goddess Naavikaran is a Naarm based change maker and storyteller, community workshop facilitator, futurist Pop musician and DJ, stage and production manager, and theatre producer. Naavikaran’s debut EP, CHIQ DISCOTHEQ is now out on all streaming platforms and is an ode to trans joy.

Ruby-Rose Pivet-Marsh is a writer, producer and arts worker living and creating on unceded Wurundjeri land. Ruby is currently the Artistic Director and co-CEO of Emerging Writers’ Festival and is a co-founder of the Latinx arts collective, Yo Soy.

Tamala Shelton is a Bundjalung (northern New South Wales) and Lama Lama (far north Queensland) First Nations actor, audiobook narrator, writer and spoken word artist based in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia)

Thabani Tshuma is a multi-award-winning Zimbabwean writer and performance poet. His work can be found in publications such as Dichotomi magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, CUBBY ART, and ABC ArtWorks’ SLAMMED segment. Thabani is co-curator of Thin Red Lines and his debut collection, ‘The Gospel of Unmade Creation’, released in 2023 through Recent Work Press.