Aniway Aquilizan reflects on their participation in the eleventh Asia Pacific Triennial. This is part two of a series that captures reflections from participants involved in ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ Community Partner Program.

Tending fruits: Community reflection as resistance

In ballroom culture, once you join a ‘house’, you adopt its name. Ballroom as we know it evolved from drag balls of the mid-1800s, becoming a space for artistic expression and kinship for Black and Latino LGBTQ+ communities of New York City in the 1970s — and beyond into the present. To take on a collective’s house name means more than attending drag and voguing events; it means tending and belonging beyond the ball, into everyday life. The ballroom movement itself is built by black and brown trans, gender-diverse and queer people. More than just performance or event, ballroom culture creates safety networks and liberation through communion for people pushed to the margins.

Watch | House of Alexander perform at the tenth Asia Pacific Triennial

As part of the Community Partners Program for the eleventh Asia Pacific Triennial, I collaborated with Ruha Fifita (Curatorial Assistant, Pacific Art, QAGOMA) and House of Alexander on a project aimed at collaborative reflection. It is a blessing to be able to work with a creative collective that operates as a model of surviving and thriving kinship. The House of Alexander is a ballroom ​​​​house made up of queer and trans/fem queen/fa’afafine/ fakaleiti artists of Blak, Brown and Pasifika heritage living and working in Meanjin’s southern suburbs and inner city. They have chapters in Gadigal/Sydney, Naarm/Melbourne and Boorloo/Perth. The house’s mother and father — mentors Ella Ganza and Joshua (Taliani) Alexander — and their children have been central to the flourishing of ballroom culture and the dance style of vogue in Meanjin.

The Community Partner Program is an opportunity to continue the plurilogue we’ve interwoven outside of institutions. Our conversations also permeate our homes, clubs, vogue nights and space (in)between. Discussions of safety and protecting the integrity of ballroom culture and its community never stop. Especially when they are engaged by institutions. We have been counselled by Rhanjell Villanueva (Prince Alexander) as a key contributor and curator in this project; in Prince’s words:

Vogue and balls are not the end product but means of honouring and educating the wider public on the legacy of Ballroom in creating alternative spaces and systems of survival, acceptance, and collective liberation of Black, Brown, Queer and Trans people.[1]

How then do we support community projects and create a value system that prioritises non-exploitative collaborations and relationships? We must not reenact the current systems that underpin institutions. Integral to this work is learning from the people who practise decolonisation in their everyday existence — breaking down colonial machines and transforming their parts into something new.

The artists–research relations with Ballroom culture has been extractive.[2] Prince and I have talked about ballroom culture and its communities’ history of resisting exploitation. Ballroom houses stood historically — and continue to stand — against racism and queer/transphobia. They act as pillars of strength, creative expression and affirmation for the existence of queer lives. Ballroom has only gained more mainstream platforming since then, but the role of its houses — alternative family or chosen kinship structures — is rarely spoken of. Ballroom is sacred; the Houses and their members, sacred. In the culture’s existence within spaces, we see ballroom communities’ persistence, occupying​​ and decolonising within white supremacist society. At the same time, they do it all with play.

In our first gathering, Ruha, Prince, Shiloh, Navindra, Olly, Pisces, Honey, Neesha and I met at the plantation of Haus Yuriyal, sowed by the hands of Yuriyal Birdgeman’s mother Veronica Gikope and kin. The plantation reminded us of our archipelagos sharing the same moana/dagat/seas, with our motherlands tending taro, sugar cane, banana and gardens we know from home. Shoes were off when entering Haus Yuriyal’s woven video space.

Watch | Haus Yuriyal’s peace garden created within the Gallery’s Sculpture Courtyard

Haus Yuriyal Piksa Haus (Picture House) 2024

Haus Yuriyal, Papua New Guinea est. 2015 / Piksa Haus (Picture House) 2024 / Timber, plywood, iron, woven pit-pit (Miscanthus floridulus) blinds with black semi-gloss and matt stain and enamel / Haus Yuriyal 2024, Multi-channel video: 16:9, colour, sound, 30 minutes (looped), Tok Pisin, Yuri, English / Courtesy: The artists and Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane / Photograph: C Callistemon © QAGOMA

Haus Yuriyal, Papua New Guinea est. 2015 / Piksa Haus (Picture House) 2024 / Timber, plywood, iron, woven pit-pit (Miscanthus floridulus) blinds with black semi-gloss and matt stain and enamel / Haus Yuriyal 2024, Multi-channel video: 16:9, colour, sound, 30 minutes (looped), Tok Pisin, Yuri, English / Courtesy: The artists and Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane / Photograph: C Callistemon © QAGOMA / View full image

Watch | Haus Yuriyal collective

Over food and butcher’s paper in the Queensland Art Gallery’s (QAG) conference room, Ruha and I learnt from the processes of the House. One of their practices is ‘circling up’ — a time of reflection before and after kikis/throwdowns (gatherings), house training and performances. We spoke about food being an important, connective part of these gatherings. We spoke about the need for institution staff to witness, observe and learn as directed by artists during collaboration. I felt seen by these processes that seemed to be tended organically. I’m always searching for these shared practices across diasporas. They are ways of being that allow us to exist authentically in spaces where we might not otherwise feel we belong.

As activists and leaders within communities, members of the House are tired and can get burnt out. The Alexanders irreverently disrupt. There is rest together. There is play together. There is dreaming together. There is radical pleasure in movement together.

From there, Prince and I created itineraries for the House to witness performances, artworks and artist talks over the rainy Triennial opening weekend. To merely be rather than to perform was central to these gatherings. Our goal was to look at art together. To immerse ourselves. To offer a space and invite — to make connections. In the opening afterparty, Neesha had gathered songs from artists in the exhibition. She curated her DJ set with the people she had met in mind, also informed by her own Samoan upbringing. People were on their feet, exchanging hands from their motherlands to classics — even the most apprehensive. She made the space feel familiar.

Again, Gikope’s plantation became our space of reflection over the weekend. On Saturday morning we found ourselves talking about the possibilities ahead. Our weekend started with learning from Mele Kahalepuna Chun’s singing. Her words asked for permission to be on this land. Next, we made music with strangers for Etson Caminha’s sound workshop. Everyday household objects were transformed into instruments, and we became a band — a motley orchestra. By lunch we gathered over adobo, protected from the rain under an undercover area besides the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). At the end of the day, after a twerk at Paemanu’s impromptu QAG opening party, our circle grew bigger with friends that we had invited to join throughout the day. We felt overwhelmed in a good way — full and tired, like after a day at the beach.

Watch | Mele Kahalepuna Chun

Watch | Etson Caminha's Triennial Performance

On Sunday morning, our group was smaller, but we were joined by artist Gahee Park, who later spoke of our circle at the Triennial’s Symposium. Prince had documented all the circles that they witnessed during the exhibition opening and it had resonated deeply with Gahee; we were not alone in seeking out the process of gathering over the weekend. There was heavy rain the whole morning, reminiscent to Filipino monsoon season. Rumbling of raindrops accompanied artist talks, creating an unsettledness. I was reminded of GOMA as a playground — and the human impulse to play — when Lele and Sol ran into the rain, starkly contrasted by everyone else’s efforts to stay dry.

As if our atmosphere knew, the rain let up and the sun came at the end of the day. We were fed by Yuriyal Bridgeman and his family. Feet wet on the soggy grass softened by footsteps following rain. Sugar cane from the garden to chew on. Barbecued taro, banana heart cooked in coconut milk — Gikope’s recipes. Collective reflection made itself organically known to be integral in the process of experiencing art with others. It is a part of careat a site that can make you feel unseen and unheard. The human impulse tobe (to)gather, is to beseen.

We find ourselves here, as we prepare to use QAGOMA as a meeting place for a Meanjin ballroom community throwdown. When these relationships are nurtured within spaces like QAGOMA, there’s an opportunity to gather more slowly — outside states of crisis. Fruits are gathered, collected and bound together when they are ready for harvest. Like the sugar cane I witnessed, ready to be shared.

Food from the peace garden

Food from Haus Yuriyal's garden / Photograph: C Baxter © QAGOMA

Food from Haus Yuriyal's garden / Photograph: C Baxter © QAGOMA / View full image

GOMA suna (peace garden) 2023–24

Veronica Gikope (collaborating artist), Yuri tribe, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea/Australia b.1964 / Haus Yuriyal (artist collective) Jiwaka Province, Papua New Guinea, est. 2015 / GOMA suna (peace garden) 2023–24 / Soil, kaikei (food), plants, pathmaterials, sculptural elements in the Queensland Art Gallery Sculpture Courtyard /Commissioned for ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ / Courtesy:Veronica Gikope and Milani Gallery,Meanjin/Brisbane

Veronica Gikope (collaborating artist), Yuri tribe, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea/Australia b.1964 / Haus Yuriyal (artist collective) Jiwaka Province, Papua New Guinea, est. 2015 / GOMA suna (peace garden) 2023–24 / Soil, kaikei (food), plants, pathmaterials, sculptural elements in the Queensland Art Gallery Sculpture Courtyard /Commissioned for ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ / Courtesy:Veronica Gikope and Milani Gallery,Meanjin/Brisbane / View full image

Aniway Aquilizan, 'The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' Community Partner

Aniway Aquilizan; Christine Ko and Louis Lim; Mohammed Azhari and Sara Shera, Australian International Islamic Colleges; Nina Taukiri, Queensland Māori Society; and Pasifika Women’s Alliance have been invited to work with QAGOMA to design and deliver a project with a specific segment of our Asian or Pacific communities. The aim is to investigate, co-design and actively foster meaningful connections and interactions between Triennial artists, audiences and local Asian and Pacific communities through a series of partner-led programs.

Asia Pacific Triennial
30 November 2024 – 27 April 2025
Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)
Brisbane, Australia
Free entry

Endnotes

  1. ^ Prince Alexander, conversation with the author
  2. ^ AndieWinsor, ‘Ballroom Refuses to Burn: Exploitation versus Community Education in Documentaries about Voguing and the Ballroom Community’,Nota Bene: Canadian Undergraduate Journal of Musicology 16, no. 1, 2023, pp. 74–92,<https://doi.org/10.5206/notabene.v16i1.16614>, viewed March 2025.

Related Stories

  • Read

    Departure: An ongoing community art project

    Christine Ko and Louis Lim reflect on their participation in the eleventh Asia Pacific Triennial. This is part three of a series that captures reflections from participants involved in ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ Community Partner Program. We are Christine and Louis, visual artists based in Meanjin/Brisbane. We held a workshop with seven students of Asian and Pacific heritage from Mabel Park State High School: Agatha, Ana Pia, Belle, Shabnam, Tiare, Trang and Wasin. Their school chaperone Chang, who is of Samoan and Chinese heritage, joined in as well. The workshop we developed was based on a desire to find out what generational shifts have occurred, if any, in the experiences of migrant youths growing up in Australia, as well as in their perceptions of cultural identity and Australian society. This curiosity came about while undertaking our collaborative project, Departure, where we interviewed a few children of migrant backgrounds and noticed the differences between their school experiences and our own. Departure is an ongoing community art project that we have been facilitating over the past couple of years, focused on telling the individual stories of Australians with migrant backgrounds. We were drawn to develop this project due to our own experiences as migrants to Australia and having witnessed through art practice how empowering the act of storytelling can be. Departure involves interviewing participants of varying ages and cultural backgrounds and helping them to design and make kites using significant family photos and objects relating to their individual migrant experiences. Each interview is edited and formatted to read like a letter and is displayed with the hanging kites to form a large communal installation where visitors can find out each participant’s story by reading the letters and viewing the kites. With our interviewing process, we were conscious of steering away from a traditional format where the interviewer asks questions of the interviewee. We wanted to create a space where we could connect personally with each participant, based on the conversational sharing of experiences. We found that this mutual sharing helped participants to feel comfortable telling their own stories and created a sense of connection to a collective experience. We developed a CPP workshop with the school students based on this approach.The day started with a brief introduction to our individual art practices and an overview of the Departure project and its relationship to the CCP workshop. We then took the students on a tour of artworks in the Asia Pacific Triennial, highlighting works by artists that resonated with our theme of migration and identity. The artists we focused on were Ishu Han, Kawita Vatanajyankur (illustrated), Alexander Ugay, Mai Nguyễn-Long (illustrated) and Zhang Xu Zhan (illustrated). Kawita Vatanajyankur The Machine Ghost in the Human Shell 2024 Watch | Time-lapse of the Vomit Girl Project installation Zhang Xu Zhan Compound eyes of tropical 2020–22/2024 After the gallery tour, we held a morning tea where we brought in various food items from our childhoods to share with the students. Food plays such a significant role within migrant communities — tied to traditions and memories — so we wanted to use this meal as a way to engage with the students, to stimulate conversations around growing up in Australia with differing cultural backgrounds. During this time, we also asked the students to reflect on the artworks we viewed during the gallery tour; we got the sense that some students revealed personal details about their lives because they felt a direct connection with certain artworks. By sharing our food and our memories, it seemed we were able to create a space where students felt comfortable to openly share their thoughts and experiences with the group. After the morning tea and lunch break, we got the students to partake in a letter-writing task. Following on from the conversations we’d had together earlier, we asked them to write a letter to a foreign penpal using the following prompts to help them think about experiences they could share: How was it like growing up as a person of colour in Australia? Is English your second language? Did it help or hinder navigating life in Australia? What type of food do you bring for school lunches? Are your friends envious of your lunchbox or do they pick on you about what you eat? Or do they not really care? Have you ever had disagreements with your parents that stemmed from differences between your cultural identities and values? Was there a time when you felt ashamed about your cultural background? Was there a time when you felt proud of your cultural background? We weren’t sure how engaged the students would be with the letter-writing task. To be honest, we weren’t sure how successful the whole workshop was going to be. We were concerned that, being teenagers, they may be unwilling to articulate their thoughts and feelings if it was something they weren’t used to doing. (We had found this to be the case with some of the adult participants in Departure.) However, we were so impressed with the students’ letters and their willingness to share their personal experiences and vulnerabilities. It seemed like our use of food and our conversational approach worked to help us connect with the students — and to help them feel comfortable to share aspects of themselves. One student even asked us for advice about their future, which was unexpected but made us feel honoured that they valued our opinions! Through our collaboration with QAGOMA in the Community Partner Program, we have witnessed firsthand how participants can benefit from learning about art from their cultural backgrounds — in this case, the Asia Pacific region — and how valuable it is for people to see their individual stories reflected in the artworks. We also learned a lot about cultural communities outside of our own, and we could see that although some progress has been made towards cultural acceptance...
  • Read

    Institutions need us

    Aniway Aquilizan reflects on their participation in the eleventh Asia Pacific Triennial. This is part one of a series that captures reflections from participants involved in ‘The 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ Community Partner Program. Tending fruits: Community reflection as resistance Growing up as a Filipina settler on unceded lands means intimately seeing and feeling how colonisation operates. I moved to Australia from the Philippines when I was six years old and spent most of my early childhood at QAGOMA. My parents were both artworkers and artists there, so the State Library of Queensland and the Children’s Art Centre, Gallery of Modern Art were our playgrounds. I was fed and held by this cultural precinct. I grew up knowing the power of art and of public institutions in making people feel a sense of belonging. My upbringing also meant that I had more access to the Gallery than other migrant kids of my generation. Though we persist anywhere and everywhere, I rarely caught whispers of Tagalog reverberating in the galleries. This isolation that I felt was the topic of so many artworks I grew up in communion with. Growing up alongside (and later working at) a public institution also made me understand them as sites of colonisation. Institutions can shape collectives; collectives shape how institutions shift; and institutions can change. We know that institutions on unceded lands are formed under colonisation and genocide; we’ve discussed the normalisation of cultural extraction in this context on end in panels and symposiums. Despite increased awareness of what’s needed to make institutions more accessible and ‘culturally safe’, conversations about change are a false economy if not followed with meaningful action. In working with Ruha Fifita (Curatorial Assistant, Pacific Art, QAGOMA) and witnessing her work within QAGOMA, I am reminded of the capacity for change-making within the boundaries of those white walls and polished concrete floors. There is always an opportunity to strengthen what institutions already have — an opportunity for them to work with us and for us. Dena Beard refers to the ‘radical work and radical pleasure’ possible in occupying these spaces; this idea became the seed of our project in collaboration with House of Alexander, a Ballroom collective comprising Blak, Brown and Pasifika queer and trans artists living and working in Meanjin. TAMBA artist Subas Tamang Artists for Waiapu Action Haus Yuriyal Collectives and collective movements contributed a distinct richness and abundance to the Gallery’s eleventh Asia Pacific Triennial. TAMBA (illustrated), Paemanu Ngāi Thai Contemporary Visual Arts, Aunofo Havea Funaki and the Lepamahanga Women’s Group (illustrated), Artists for Waiapu Action (illustrated), Haus Yuriyal (illustrated), Kawaki and Dreamcast Theatre, Torba Weavers, CAMP, Boloho (illustrated), Kikik Kollektive (illustrated), Loupe, Australian International Islamic Colleges, Queensland Māori Society, the Pasifika Women’s Alliance, and the House of Alexander — all collectives selected to participate in this iteration of the Triennial have shaped the institution in return. There is a staunchness in the action of having these collectivities meet here, underscoring the need for alternative frameworks and models of care in artist–institution collaboration. In these contexts, we carve space for collective dreaming. BOLOHO Lunar Factory 2024 As an example, the Triennial allowed me to cross paths with Kikik Kollektive. At my first encounter with the collective, a black beetle found my hand as its landing strip. We all read it as our ancestors smiling down on us. Kikik members Tin, Marrz, Marge and Noel cooked exotic iterations of food from home for my sister and I: kangaroo adobo, minudo cooked with tomato soup, and soto. It was comforting to exchange our diverse experiences of ‘Filipino-ness’ — understanding the Duterte drug war, disability support, food sovereignty and land rights in the Philippines from an experience of someone living there. Listening to our mother tongue inside the Gallery made me feel at home. Even more, as we connected in a world that can be unloving or isolating, we shared a song of lament. Kikik Kollektive Tul-an sang aton kamal-aman (Bones of our elders) 2024 When Ruha and I first met with the House of Alexander, we were able to see weavings from across our homelands in QAGOMA’s gallery spaces: rattan from Papua New Guinea, grasses from across the Pacific and colourful cotton from Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. This experience comes with a deep feeling of being known and seen. Yet we were unable to touch these physical manifestations of our ancestors’ knowledge in the way that we know how. In our conversations with the Alexanders, we realised that the systems of an institution’s machine can be disjointed from human interaction; it begins to feel like our belongings are trapped in a glass cabinet, detached from the life that is imbued in them and their making — their essence. ‘Aunofo Havea Funaki Fala Kuta e Toa Ko Tavakefai‘ana 2024 Our collaboration with the House of Alexander for the Triennial started 12 months ago. We wanted to co-create a series of reflection spaces with the collective through their connection to the exhibition series and beyond. Members of the House contributed to performances held for the previous Triennial, in 2022; they spoke of missing a moment for reflection with the institution before and after. There is a disjuncture when institutions have so much access to distinct arts communities, but communities do not have the same access to institutions. In this ever-evolving project — part of the Community Partners Program — we’ve had the opportunity for ongoing conversation with the House and its members, underpinned by deep listening. We wanted to generate knowledge together that benefits artists first. The eleventh Triennial reminded us that dreaming together and making time to reflect deeply is a gift. It allows us to embody knowledge — to feel it in our limbs, in the touch of our fingertips and in the planting of the soles of our feet. Conversations with artists, arts workers and visitors reinforce the...
Loading...