In this first edition of the illustrated zine ‘Our Bamboo’, artist Tiyan Baker documents some of the varied uses of bamboo in her community - the Bukar Bidayǔh people of south-western Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo.
‘Our Bamboo’ is a lush, verdant celebration of bamboo as an abundant and versatile material, that symbolises Bukar Bidayǔh resourcefulness, creativity and connection to land.
Tiyan Baker is an artist who works with installation, photography, video and sculpture. Her practice draws on historical research, language, digital processes and material play to trace unseen relationships between words, place and stories. Centring her Bidayǔh culture in her works, Baker is also interested in things she has unknowingly inherited. Living far from native lands, culture and family, in the midst of the (re)colonisation of Borneo, she explores all that can be mistranslated or lost, and what can manifest in its place. She has shown her works widely across Australia, and is the winner of the 2022 National Photography Prize awarded by the Murray Art Museum Albury. She was born and raised on the Larrakia lands known as Darwin and currently lives and works on the Awabakal and Worimi lands known as Newcastle, Australia.
