Kia ora!

I’m excited to be co-convening a panel with the awesome Dr. Jo Burzynska at the 2026 AAANZ Conference in Aotearoa New Zealand later this year.

📅 Call for Papers deadline: 24 July 2026

Conference dates: Wednesday 2 – Friday 4 December 2026
📍 Ōtautahi Christchurch

Hosted by the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

The 2026 conference theme, Haereka (pronounced high-reh-kah), means journey. It honours the journeys of those who came before us, including generations of Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, and Ngāi Tahu people who traversed and first settled the mountain ranges, plains, and coastlines of Te Waipounamu (South Island).

Panel: Sensory Journeys: Traversing Culture, Environment and Perception through Sensory Art

We warmly invite proposals from researchers, artists, curators, designers, and practitioners exploring the role of the senses in shaping artistic practice, environmental engagement, cultural knowledge, and perception.

The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) is the national professional body for Australian and New Zealand art historians, bringing together academics, postgraduate students, artists, designers, and gallery and museum professionals.

Find the full Call for Papers here: https://aaanz.info/aaanz-home/conferences/2026-conference-haereka/call-for-papers-2026-conference/⁠

We look forward to reading your proposals. Please share this opportunity with colleagues who may be interested!

Huge congratulations to the team at the Cultural Center of the Philippines on the launch of the redesigned Thirteen Artists Awards website! 

The CCP Thirteen Artists Awards (TAA) is a prestigious triennial Philippine art award established in 1970. Administered by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, it honors outstanding young visual artists whose innovative practices and works contribute significantly to the development of contemporary Philippine art.

Hat tip to my fellow 2021 artists! I’m happy and honored that The Weighing of the Heart, a sculptural series that cast the ashes of the 2019-2020 Australian Black Summer, was exhibited for this milestone.

You can view the website here: https://thirteenartists.culturalcenter.gov.ph

It is a pleasure to have The Sewer Soaperie included in this beautifully installed exhibition. My deepest thanks to curators Kuang Yi Ku and Davey Lin. Friends in Taiwan, please check it out!

The Sewer Soaperie (2016- ) is an artscience project that turns fatbergs into soap.

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Exhibition Name: Contaminations: Towards a Science Gallery
Period: 2026.06.01 MON. – 07.09 THU.
Venue: NYCU Gallery, Hsinchu, Taiwan
Curator: Ku Kuang Yi with Lin Cheng Wei (Davey)

Curatorial Statement

Looking back at the history of science, the discovery of the antibiotic penicillin was, in fact, the result of an experimental contamination.

When we speak of contamination, we may think of plastic micro-particles, viruses, or space debris. At the same time, contamination also signifies a disturbance of boundaries, or the infiltration, staining, and hybridization between two entities. Such interactions may appear negative, yet they also represent opportunities for transformation. Art & Science Collaboration functions in a similar way: seemingly disruptive to each other’s methodologies, yet capable of merging into entirely new possibilities.

This exhibition unfolds across two main sections. On the first floor, the area titled “Towards a Science Gallery” presents the team’s research on global institutions of Art & Science Collaboration through richly illustrated panels. It highlights twelve exemplary cases drawn from universities, research institutes, and cultural organizations, offering comparative analyses of their models. An interactive game further invites visitors to step into the role of a resource-holder, experimenting with diverse choices to construct their own vision of an ideal science gallery.

Extending to the second floor, the thematic section “Contamination” takes pollution as its central keyword. It features works by seven international artists who have previously participated in global Science Gallery exhibitions, alongside six student groups from NYCU’s interdisciplinary courses, and one collaborative team formed by fiber artist Lin Tzu Fen and the Microplastic Risk Communication Group at NYCU’s Institute of Science, Technology and Society. Together, they transform pressing issues—such as global water pollution, microplastic contamination, and air pollution, as well as infectious diseases like mosquito-borne illnesses and HIV—into diverse artistic creations.

In Taiwan today, collaborations between art and science remain relatively rare. Do we truly need such an exhibition model? If so, what strategies should we adopt to build sustainable systems and foster international exchange? This exhibition invites audiences to reflect, to question, and to spark new dialogues together.

I am honoured and excited to have spoken at the Indigenous Studies Discussion Group Symposium at the University of Cambridge next week. I presented my talk, ‘Atmospheric Storytelling: Scent, Petrichor, and Ecocultural Knowledge’, specifically the Olfactory Wheel for the Critical Zone and Martian Petrichor projects. Thank you for having me!

Today I had the pleasure of speaking again at my dear friend Zoe Bezpalko’s DMBA class at the California College of the Arts, sharing my talk, ‘The Creative Resistance: Art, Science, and Systems Change’. Zoe was one of my first Climate Change Couture models, and we met when we were both based in Singapore more than a decade ago. Thank you for having me!

Returning this time felt especially meaningful and also bittersweet knowing this is the last time. After 119 years, the venerable CCA is closing — an institution that shaped generations of artists, designers, architects, and thinkers. It’s difficult to imagine the cultural landscape without it.

To my students here in Sydney: let’s be grateful for our art and design education — the studios, workshops, critiques, conversations, libraries, friendships, and experiments. Nothing is guaranteed in this life, including the institutions we think will always be there. The opportunity to learn, make, imagine, and think critically together is deeply precious. Protect it, honour it, and make good use of it.

Excited to once again be part of the Virtual Events Committee as one of this year’s Obama Leadership Network Champions 🌍 It’s already been a joy connecting with fellow committee members Amanda, Alina, and Ivanna late at night here in Sydney. We’ve had the chance to meet, exchange ideas, and build momentum together. There’s a real sense of energy and care in the group, and we’re all excited about what we’re planning for the year ahead.

Being part of this also brings me back to 2019, when I first joined the network and we convened in Malaysia, just before the pandemic. There was so much hope, curiosity, and openness without knowing the scale of challenges that lay ahead. Returning to this community now, I’m reminded how vital these connections are and how we need them more than ever.

There’s also so much excitement around the upcoming opening of the Obama Presidential Center—an inspiring milestone that reflects the power of community, storytelling, and civic engagement. I’m also eager to contribute to and learn from the Communities of Practice in Education, Democracy, Climate, and Social Entrepreneurship & Tech. Each of these spaces feels deeply aligned with the kind of work and conversations our world needs right now.

It’s going to be a meaningful year ahead!

The Sewer Soaperie is featured in The Hindustan Times.

Thank you to Rachel Lopez for including the project in her piece on fatbergs—those stubborn accumulations of oil, wipes, and everyday habits that quietly shape our urban infrastructures.

The Sewer Soaperie began as a speculative question 10 years ago — what might it mean to transform sewer waste into soap? — and has since evolved into an ongoing inquiry into waste, systems, and the sensory dimensions of what we choose not to see (or smell).

I’m grateful (and slightly amused) to see the work travel into this context a decade after its inception as someone with clogged shower drains. The project continues across exhibitions, research collaborations, and interdisciplinary work between the poetic and the infrastructural.

The CreMAP Directory of Innovators and Art-Scientists is a Montreal-based platform dedicated to creating a network of multidisciplinary minds in art, science and technology. The directory is a global hub for the integration of creativity and research, inspiring solutions at the intersection of art and science. I’m stoked to have a profile — head on over and look up other interdisciplinary peers worldwide!