How do artists and designers make art in the aftermath of Invasion Day? How do creatives protest deaths in custody? What design strategies can be used to amplify the voices of the voiceless and dehumanized? How do artists subvert the constant violent performance of settler-colonial sovereignty in Australia?

This workshop will focus on the nexus of art and activism, looking at campaign messaging through concepts such as amplification and subversion, and how these can be translated into creative practice. Participants will have the opportunity to create their own activism artworks for World Refugee Week.

This workshop hosted by Refugee Rights Action Network WA and KIKEI DOT NET, forms part of the Seasons, Histories, Hopes: Imagined Migrant Futures Exhibition. This group exhibition is the creative outcome of Imagined Migrant Futures, a community art and research project initiated by Steven Finch and Gabby Loo for their State Library Creative Fellowship 2018/19, which focused on decoloniality and Asian migrant autobiographic expression in Western Australia. The State Library acknowledges the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund in its support of this project 🌕For more information on our exhibiting artists check out the event page!

This workshop takes place on the stolen lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation. The artists pay our respects to any elders past and present, and extend solidarity and friendship and hope for a future where all are afforded justice, dignity, and peace.

The artists also extend our solidarity to those seeking asylum, and who have been unjustly imprisoned by the state of Australia in indefinite detention and who have been denied basic freedoms.