House of Alexander: Togather

House of Alexander perform at 'The 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' 2021 / Photograph: K Bennet © QAGOMA / View full image
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 / 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 / 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 / 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
- ^ Prince Alexander, conversation with the author
- ^ 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.