𝙏𝘼𝙆𝙀𝘼𝙒𝘼𝙔: Tales from the Flavour Superhighway

Bios 🐣

Artists

Marley Dawson uses chemistry, mechanics and construction techniques to create sculptures and installations that highlight aspects of our world and selves that can be uncanny, surreal and extraordinary. Dawson has been exhibiting extensively for over a decade inside Australia and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include: Public Furniture, Roslyn Oxley9, Sydney, 2018; Construction (Barangaroo), Barangaroo, Sydney, 2016; Gravity (and Wonder); Palethorp, Roslyn Oxley9, Sydney (2016), Construction (T Street NW), 5x5 Project, Washington DC (2014), Marley Dawson (performance), Kreeger Museum, Washington DC (2014); and Statics and Dynamics, HEMPHILL Fine Arts, Washington DC (2014). In 2023 he received the Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Scholarship from Sydney College of the Arts (SCA), and worked closely with the Wiradjuri community in Albury to deliver the major public art commission Bungambrawatha, on the shores of the Murray River.  

Keg de Souza is an artist and researcher of Goan ancestry living on unceded Gadigal land. Architecturally trained, Keg creates social and spatial environments, making reference to lived experiences of squatting and organising with projects using plant and food politics, temporary architecture, publishing and radical pedagogy. Keg draws from experiences of colonialism informing projects that centre voices that are often marginalised – sharing lesser-known stories of plants, people and Place. Keg has a PhD through Wominjeka Djeembana, Monash University. In 2024 Keg was a Dahl Fellow, Eucalypt Australia and Gilbert Fellow, Sydney University and has made projects for: Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, India; Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh; ACCA, Melbourne; South London Gallery; Artspace; AGNSW; 20th Biennale of Sydney; Setouchi Triennale; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; 15th Jakarta Biennale (with ruangrupa) and 5th Auckland Triennial.

Gianna Christella Hayes was born in Tongva Land/Los Angeles and currently lives and works across Dharug & Gundungurra Country/Western Sydney and Gadigal Land/Sydney. Their multidisciplinary practice spans textiles, film, and immersive installations, often incorporating soil, seeds, plants, and botanical dyes to explore identity, migration, and the reclamation of ancestral diasporic practices disrupted by colonial powers. Hayes has served as a nature pedagogy educator leading youth in nature play immersions at Greater Sydney Parklands & Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, alongside being the founder of Hilum Earth - a living archive and embodied research lab that takes shape through creative botanical workshops and seed swap initiatives to celebrate the interconnection of plants, people and memories. Hayes's work and workshops have been presented at the Art Gallery of NSW, Powerhouse Museum, Cement Fondue and Runway Journal. In 2025, she was a selected artist for the Altitude Program at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre.  

Gillian Kayrooz and her art practice were nurtured on unceded Dharug land in Guildford, Western Sydney and is deeply rooted in alternative methods of truth-telling through image-making. Working across photography, video and participatory practice, her work foregrounds collective memory, everyday life and community resilience while challenging dominant forms of representation. She was awarded the 2018 Create NSW Young Creative Leaders Fellowship and has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across Australia. Kayrooz has held a studio tenancy at Parramatta Artists’ Studios and served as Co-Director and Co-Chair of Firstdraft from 2021–2023. In 2024, she was announced as the recipient of the Create NSW x Artspace Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship.In 2025, she became a member of the  Create NSW Youth Network and contributed to the Create NSW Western Sydney Creative Plan. Most recently, she was the Vitocco Curator at the Powerhouse Museum, focusing on the cultural, agricultural, entrepreneurial and food-related histories of South-West Sydney. In 2026, she was selected as lead artist alongside L-Fresh the Lion for the ReVITALise Public Art Commission with Campbelltown City Council, and is exhibiting in And Still I Rise at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Zora Pang is an artist and organiser, grew up in a coastal Chinese city Shenzhen with the context of rapid urbanisation. Her heritage is, on her father's side, one of making new places home and on her mother's Teochew side, food, Chinese medicine and spirituality - all leading her to see everything as connected and ever-changing. Her creative practice is driven by the desire to connect through differences, always looking for the space to hold curiosity and honesty. She is currently interested in how trust can grow through time over food and conversations, and how embodied experience can inspire conflict transformation in collective work. Zora’s work has been at kitchens, parks, bedrooms, cafes, a canteen, a train, a storage warehouse, meeting rooms... She has presented works with You Are Here Canberra (ACT), Tuggeranong Arts Centre (ACT), Tributary Projects (ACT), Live Art Lab A+G Arts Centres (ACT), Shenzhen\Hongkong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB)(China). 

Janhavi Salvi is an Indian Artist working within the Visual and Media Arts, based in Canberra, Australia. Her practice is driven by the aim to make artworks that move away from the ‘please do not touch’ conditioning to a more liberal form of engagement that encourages touching and tampering with the work, or positioning  even the most basic emotional response (even that of a chuckle) as a gesture of co-authorship. She has exhibited her work at Tributary Projects (ACT) and photo access (ACT) as a recipient of the Dark Matter Residency opportunity. Janhavi is an emerging arts leader in the ACT, developing programs for Tributary Projects, You Are Here and University of Canberra Creativity and Culture Seminar Series. 

James Tylor is a multidisciplinary visual artist with Nunga (Kaurna Miyurna), Māori (Te Arawa) and European (English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch and Norwegian) ancestry. Through photography, video, painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, sound, scent and food, Tylor’s work interrogates the colonial history of 19th century Australia and its continual effect on present day issues surrounding cultural identity and the environment, focusing most specifically on impacts on Kaurna Indigenous culture from the Adelaide Plains region of South Australia. His work has been exhibited widely in Australia and internationally, and is in esteemed collections such as Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Kluge Ruhe Aboriginal Art Museum (Charlottesville, Monacan Indian Nation VA, USA) and  National Portrait Gallery (London UK) among others. 

Curators

Mariam Ella Arcilla is a creative producer, writer, and organiser based on Gadigal/Sydney. Through her communal project, Magenta House, Mariam stages culturally-vital programs and collaborations that explore the caretaking synergies between art, food, communing and experimental practices. Alongside this, she works with leading collectives and institutions in Australia to produce knowledge-sharing projects across ARIs, institutions, government, galleries, publications, and hospitality venues. She has staged various community-engaged projects for Arts House, BANG-ON, 4A Centre of Contemporary Asian Art, Institute of Modern Art, Parramatta Artists Studios, and Arts Qld. She was a Founding Co-Director of Gold Coast-based ARIs tinygold, Miami Marketta, and Rabbit + Cocoon and was a Co-Chair/Digital Producer at Runway Journal. As a creative, Mariam has presented commissioned work on food sovereignty and gastropoetics for Outer Space, Saluhan, Welcome Merchant, The Entree.Pinays, Electrofringe, Firstdraft, Liquid Architecture, and Powerhouse Museum. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) from Griffith University and spent her formative years in hospitality—oscillating between family bakeries, pubs, clubs, fine dining, fast food chains, and food marketing in Australia, the Philippines, and the UK. Because of this, Mariam is an avid snacker with treats in her pockets at all times!

Denise Thwaites is a Kamberri-based arts curator, writer and researcher of Uyghur and British descent, whose transdisciplinary, collaborative practice explores the hybrid materials of networked life. She has co-curated exhibition projects for Artspace Ideas Platform (Sydney), Next Wave Festival (Melbourne), Firstdraft (Sydney), This Is Not Art Festival (Newcastle), New Beginnings Refugee Culture and Arts Festival (Sydney) and Haig Park Experiments (Canberra). She has co-curated live art events for international programs such as NOVA_XX Biennial at Centre Wallonie Bruxelles (Paris, FR) and the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam, NL). Her writing on art, technology and radical economies has been published in Kunstlicht, Runway Journal of Experimental Art, Performance Paradigm, Artlink, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, Cordite Poetry Review and Meniscus Literary Journal and in publications by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Newcastle Art Gallery and Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Since 2023, Denise has been a Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Arts at University of Canberra, having previously worked at Roslyn Oxley Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, National Art School Sydney and University of New South Wales. 

Artistic-agents and Collaborators
Professional Development/Public Program sessions

Merlinda Bobis is an award-winning novelist, poet, and dramatist. She has published 4 novels, 6 poetry books, 2 collections of short stories and various scholarly essays, and has performed her plays internationally. Her new novel In the Name of the Trees (out late 2025), explores food figures in healing, preserving identity and 'human-environment interdependence and reciprocity'. Her previous novel Locust Girl, A Lovesong, which won the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, is about borders, refugees and food insecurity. Food insecurity and ‘food strategising’ in the face of hunger, trauma, colonisation and migration, as well as the joy and nurture from food, are prevalent in her writings, especially in her first novel Banana Heart Summer, which received the Philippines’ Gintong aklat Award (‘Golden Book Award’) and was shortlisted for the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Her other awards include the Philippine National Book Award, the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award in Literature, the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas (Philippine Balagtas Award), the Manila Critics’ Circle Award, the Prix Italia, and the Australian Writers’ Guild Award. In 2025 she was named as one of the top ten female novelists shaping the literary scene in Southeast Asia. Merlinda writes about women and girls, borders and difference, the environment, war and memory, and the poetics and politics of care. These themes have also driven her performance works and community arts and advocacy projects in the Philippines, Australia and Canada. As a Filipino-Australian, Merlinda continues to weave together the stories of her two homes: Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (Canberra, Australia) and Albay (Bikol, Philippines). She is currently Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University. 

Lauren Carroll Harris is a curator and nonfiction writer who has been published in Lit Hub, New Statesman, Los Angeles Review of Books, Brooklyn Rail, Mubi Notebook, The Baffler’s online vertical, The Toast, Sydney Review of Books and Art Guide Australia among others. She was the founding curator of prototype, an innovative commissioning platform, which delivers new video art and experimental short film to audiences by email newsletter. Her current work explores representations of motherhood in popular culture, as discord with her experiences living and working at Gollion Farm, a regenerative farm in the greater Canberra Region. 

Xinyi Lim is a chef, curator and creative consultant whose multidisciplinary practice explores the intersections of food, culture and identity. Originally trained as a lawyer, she worked across international law and commercial practice in Australia, China and the Netherlands before shifting paths in 2015. Moving to New York marked the beginning of her culinary career, leading her to cook in kitchens across New York, Mexico City and Sydney – including as opening head chef at Cafe Freda’s, and acclaimed restaurant Firedoor. Xinyi’s work spans hospitality, event production and community engagement. She has curated food festivals such as Happy Family Night Market (New York) and as part of Parramatta Lanes 2024–25, and creates intimate dining experiences rooted in community and collaboration. Her charitable initiative Family Meal and involvement with organisations like OzHarvest, Welcome Merchant and Two Good Co reflect an ongoing commitment to food justice and social impact. Xinyi currently leads Powerhouse Food, a program at the Powerhouse Museum exploring the complex dimensions of food – across history, culture, agriculture, production and innovation. Through her experimental platform Megafauna, Xinyi continues to explore food as a medium for artistic expression, advocacy and storytelling.

Magenta House is a gathering and knowledge-sharing space that digests the synergy between art, food, social communing, and experimental practices. Based on Gadigal/Sydney, our projects look at the ways that creative hospitality, co-learning and intimate assemblies can embolden our ways of navigating and caring for the wider world together. In this spirit, we self-organise and collaborate with kindreds to create workshops, communal meals, test kitchens, dialogues, learning modules, library sessions, and more. We also run an online shop supporting social ventures and independent artisans across Asia and Australia.

Irfan Master is an  award-winning author of novels, short stories, poetry, and plays. His debut novel, A Beautiful Lie (Bloomsbury) which explored familial and childhood experiences of the partition of India, was translated into 10 languages and is currently being adapted into a touring stage play. His second novel for young adults, Out of Heart (Bonnier Books) was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and UKLA award. Irfan's short fiction has also been published in numerous anthologies. Irfan is a passionate advocate for creative and literacy projects in the  community and has developed programmes for young people to gain access to the creative arts. He has worked with English PEN, the British Council and the Arvon Foundation to deliver writing workshops in schools and prisons. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Canberra where he also teaches Creative Writing.

Racha Syrian Kitchen is run by Racha Abou Alchamat and is a culinary venture dedicated to sharing the rich flavours, traditions, and stories of Syrian cuisine with the Australian community. Born and raised in Syria, Racha learned to cook from her father — a chef and restaurant owner — and from generations of family recipes passed down with love. Since moving to Australia, she has proudly become one of the first Syrians to introduce and educate Australians about authentic Syrian food. Through her cooking classes, catering, and public events, Racha blends food with storytelling, offering a taste of home while fostering cultural understanding and connection. Racha’s Syrian Kitchen has been featured on SBS Food, The Guardian, and The Cook Up with Adam Liaw. Her work is driven by a vision of using food as a bridge between cultures — inviting people to gather, cook, share, and celebrate together. Whether in an intimate kitchen class, a vibrant festival, or a corporate team-building session, Racha brings warmth, authenticity, and a deep passion for showcasing the beauty of Syrian hospitality — one dish at a time.

Tributary Projects is an artist-run initiative on Ngunnawal Country (Canberra, ACT) shaping practices that navigate the boundary of art. Once a gallery, we’ve since shapeshifted into something looser, wilder: a conduit where friendships spark and creative work can be stretched and reimagined. We’ve let go of the ‘white cube’ gallery box, and in the wake of COVID, have been asking: what does our community really need? The answer looks less like walls and more like conversations over shared meals, relationships that holds us through art making, gatherings for learning, playing and celebration.