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 and celebrating her indigenous heritage and culture in her works, Baker is also interested in things she has unknowingly inherited. As a Bidayǔh-Anglo woman in Australia, with limited access to native lands, culture and family, and living in the midst of the (re)colonisation of Borneo, she explores all that can shift, be mistranslated or lost, and what can manifest in its place. Using an artistic logic that is part salvaging and part speculating, her work engages in imaginative, embodied storytelling and world-building to reclaim her vision of her indigenous heritage in the face of intergenerational shame and disadvantage, systematic destruction of culture, and geographical disconnect from family and kins. 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.
Selected Group Exhibitions and Festivals:
2022 DALAM, curated by Catriona Maddocks, HAUS Kuching, Malaysia
2022 Stray Voltage, curated by Rebecca McCauley, Kings ARI, VIC
2022 We Have Never Been Modern, curated by Robert McDougall, Centre of Contemporary Art, Georgia
2022 Play Ground, curated by Holly Farrell, The Lock Up, NSW
2022 Personal Mythologies, curated by Sophia Cai, La Trobe Art Institute, VIC
2022 Epistolaristics, curated by Alfonse Chiu, GMBB, Malaysia
2022 a park is not a forest, curated by Salote Tawale, Sydney College of the Arts Galleries, NSW
2021 Makeshift, curated by Taylor Mitchell, RMIT University, VIC
2021 No Show, curated by Lauren Carroll Harris, Carriageworks, NSW
2020 20:20, curated by Michael Moran, Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA), NSW
2020 NSW Visual Arts (Emerging) Fellowship, curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor, Artspace, NSW
2020 Preppers, online
2019 Preppers, Fremantle Arts Centre, WA
2019 The Freedman Foundation Exhibition, curated by Isabella Cornell, UNSW Galleries, NSW
2017 Almost Doco, curated by Lauren Carroll Harris, RealTime Video Gallery, online
Tours:
Bamboo Paradise, as part of the group show Preppers, supported by Art on the Move, toured at:
- Geraldton Regional Art Gallery, WA (2020)
- Katanning Art Gallery, WA (2020)
- Museum of the Goldfields, WA (2021)
- Albany Town Hall, WA (2021)
- The Cannery Arts Centre, WA (2021)
Prizes:
2022 Winner, National Photography Prize, NSW
2021 Finalist, The Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, QLD
2020 Finalist, Fisher's Ghost Art Award, NSW
2020 Finalist, NSW Visual Arts (Emerging) Fellowship
2020 Finalist, Goolugatup Heathcote Digital Art Prize, WA
2019 Recipient, The Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship, NSW
2018 Finalist, The 65th Blake Prize, NSW
2014 Winner, Macquarie Digital Portraiture Award, ACT
Solo Exhibitions:
2022 My mother’s tongue, Bus Projects, VIC
2020 Tarun, Prototype, online
2019 Hard As You Can, Prototype, online
2019 One Million Views, Closed on Monday Gallery, online
2018 Bliss Me, Constance ARI, TAS
2016 One Million Views, Success, WA
Collaborations:
2021 A Sunken Garden, with Lyndon Blue, Girls School Gallery, WA
2020 Panic Buy, with Guy Louden, Sawtooth ARI, TAS, online
2020 Panic Buy, with Guy Louden, Girls School Gallery, WA
2017 Apocalypse Anonymous, with Loren Kronemyer, The Big Anxiety Festival 2017, NSW
2016 One Million Views, with Xanthe Dobbie, Next Wave Festival 2016, VIC
Screenings, Film Festivals and Events:
2022 Portrait of a Place, curated by Lauren Carroll Harris, Kings ARI, VIC
2022 Composite x SEVENTH, Composite Moving Image Agency & Media Bank, VIC
2022 The Discomfort of Everything, Dogmilk Films, Miscellania, VIC
2022 Powerhouse Late, Powerhouse Museum, NSW
2022 Australian Next Wave, 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, QLD
2021 Crisis Actor, PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, NSW
2020 Hyperlinks URL, Static Vision, online
2020 Lockdown: An Interactive Livestream, Static Vision, online
2020 Hyperlinks, Static Vision, NSW
2019 Biting Morsel, Verge Gallery, NSW
2017 Adhocracy 2017, SA
Selected Residencies and Activities:
2021- 2023 Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) Interdisciplinary Lab, online
2022 CUT N POLISH, Carriageworks, NSW
2021 SEM/ALAM Art Lab, Centre for Urban Mythologies + Gerimis Art Project Malaysia, online
2022 disorganising, Bus Projects + West Space + Liquid Architecture, VIC
2020 Residency, Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship, Sarawak
2019 Residency, Chronus Art Centre, on invitation from Pony Express, Shanghai
2017 Residency, Frontyard Projects, NSW
2017 Residency, Adhocracy 2017, SA
2016 Residency, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, WA
2014 Residency, Red Gate Gallery, Beijing
Education:
2012 Bachelor of Fine Arts/Bachelor of Arts, UNSW
2010 Digital Media Studies, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China (exchange program)
2009 Porosity Studio, Donghua University, Shanghai, China (exchange program)
Selected Bibliography:
2022 Neha Kale. Root and Branch. Wonderground, Issue Four, Family / Tree.
2022 Dinesh Kumar Maganathan. Orang Asal exhibition in KL highlights a new generation of indigenous artists. The Star.
2022 Verónica Tello. From Impulse to Action, A Park is Not a Forest. MeMO Rewiew.
2021 Pamela See. Exhibition review: The Churchie Emerging Art Prize. ArtsHub.
2021 Madeline Brewer. ‘the churchie’ emerging art prize 2021. The Review Board.
2021 Dinushi Dias. Goldfields museum exhibition reveals what you may have in common with doomsday preppers. ABC Goldfields.
2021 Phoebe Chen. Radical Ecologies. Carriageworks Journal.
2020 Gina Fairley. Exhibition Review: 2020 NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship, Artspace. ArtsHub.
2020 Barnaby Smith. Tiyan Baker and Guy Louden on the cold poetics of the pandemic. Art Guide.
2020 Preppers and the YOYO (You’re on your own culture). We Make Money Not Art.
2020 5 Questions with Tiyan Baker. Liminal Magazine.
2020 Miranda Johnson. Prepping for Doomsday. Seesaw Magazine.
2020 Ben Rodin. I Feel A Song Coming On. Semaphore.
2019 Stuart Richards. Prototype review: experimental Australian films as poetic diary entries. The Conversation.
2019 Shelley Wang. Artist of the Week. ARC UNSW.
2014 James Purtill. Digital artist Tiyan Melissa Kilie Baker's portraits depict memories of love and loss in Beijing. ABC Radio Darwin.
2014 Jane Somerville. Identities in digital: Macquarie Digital Portraiture Award. ArtsHub.
2014 Siobhan Heanue. Lonely landscapes of love: digital portraiture award goes to young Northern Territory artist. ABC News.
I live and work on the lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora nation.
This sovereign land was never ceded.
The land I live on always was and always will be Aboriginal land.