Our HOLDING SPACE program recently kicked off! On the 5th of May 2025, a few of the selected artists came together to share their own ritual of welcome and collective intention for the project at De Freitas Wetland in Fairfield. Artist and Darug Elder, Jacinta Tobin encouraged everyone to observe the land around them and then led a vital conversation on how we can take better care of country together. Jacinta’s powerful words of welcome and song provided a grounding that resonated through the whole landscape. What a special way to start the program!
Now – please give a warm welcome to the 16 artists, who have been selected for the HOLDING SPACE – Rituals of Welcome program:
Damon Amb
Damon AMB is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, and cultural storyteller whose work is rooted in personal history, displacement, and the search for identity. Born in Iran and now based in Australia, Damon’s journey as a refugee deeply informs their artistic practice, which spans photography, painting, digital art, and curatorial work.
With a background in both commercial and conceptual photography, Damon moves fluidly between mediums, blending subconscious expression with documentary truth. Their visual language is richly layered—psychedelic, abstract, and emotionally resonant—often drawing from memory, trauma, dreams, and lived experience. Damon’s work is both a reflection and a release: a way to navigate chaos and create harmony.
Damon has exhibited across galleries in Iran, Sydney, Melbourne, a variety of community and professional platforms and collaborated with arts and cultural institutions including community refugee welcome centre, CuriousWorks, SSI, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, and several local councils. He is currently developing a fusion book combining image, text, and mixed media as a non-linear exploration of self.
As an artist, Damon is driven by themes of exile, belonging, transformation, and the enduring power of human stories. Their work aims not only to express but to connect—to build bridges between past and present, personal and collective, art and activism.
Elizabeth Jigalin
Elizabeth Jigalin is a composer, artist and performer. In her work, she is often drawn to explore site specific music-making, interactive play spaces, and found materials. Guided by curiosity, Elizabeth collaborates and creates across art forms. You’ll often find Elizabeth making music with creative music collective @themusicboxproject.
Ezra Mukendi
Ezra Mukendi (b. 2006 in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo) is a self-taught artist who developed his skills in Malawi. Working mainly with pen, pencil, oils, and acrylics, Ezra’s art reflects his passion for storytelling and social themes. He has created murals for business owners in Malawi and participated in several exhibitions in Sydney through the Creative Compass program.
Ezra uses his art to explore themes like freedom, human rights, equality, and the importance of love and community. His work pays respect to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the original caretakers of the land and honors their long-lasting connection to it.
His first exhibition was held at Police HQ, Parramatta.
Hosna Saif
My name is Hosna Saif. I’m originally from Afghanistan, now living in Australia, and currently studying law while continuing my passion for art. I’m dedicated to making a difference through both my creativity and my future legal career.
Jacinta Tobin
Jacinta Tobin is a Musical Educator of mixed race from the Boorooberongal and Cannemegal freshwater Darug clans from Greater Sydney with European blood. Jacinta has over 25 years worked in community, government and non-government organisation and has received many awards for her service. Jacinta received her master’s in Social Ecology in 1999 from Western Sydney University and has a Doctorate called “Ngura Barayagai Song Belonging to Country” at The University of Sydney 2025. Jacinta believes when we speak or sing in language, we are massaging Country. Jacinta believes that there is an old science of knowledge that needs re-awaking for her community and Country’s healing through Songline revitalisation.
Jessica Tobin
Jessica Tobin is a Dharug multidisciplinary artist and educator whose community-led practice centres on healing, cultural connection, and creative expression. With a background in socially engaged art and Aboriginal cultural practices, she facilitates workshops that honour traditional knowledge while inviting personal storytelling and connection.
Juan Guillermo Robayo Gómez
Juan Guillermo Robayo Gómez is a Colombian multidisciplinary artist and video producer working at the intersection of film, performance, and cultural storytelling. He holds a Film degree from the National University of Colombia, an MFA from the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), and pursued Film Studies in the UK with support from the British Council and Fundación Carolina.
Through his company La Casa del Árbol Films, he produced the queer series Give Me Back the Night! (premiered at the Berlin Series Festival) and Airuna, an award-winning animated series inspired by Indigenous Latin American cosmogony, recognized at the Cusco Web Fest. His performance Sombras Sonoras was also presented at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.Now based in Australia, Guillermo developed the immersive performance The Call of Fire at PYT Fairfield and is part of its 2025 Ensemble. He was named one of NSW’s Top 20 Cultural Leaders and selected for the StoryCasters Program by Diversity Arts Australia. He currently serves on the Fairfield City Council’s Arts Advisory Committee and is developing Dancing with the Roots in collaboration with CuriousWorks.
Justine Youssef
Justine Youssef is a film, scent, and installation artist whose work is site-specific, informed by ethnobotany, and guided by worldbuilding processes. Her exhibition ‘Somewhat Eternal’ toured at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (2024), the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2024), and UTS Gallery, Sydney (2023), following earlier work at the Hawai’i Triennial, O’ahu (2022). Justine lives and works on Dharug Country in Sydney, Australia, where First Nations sovereignty was never ceded.
Kumari Abeydeera
Kumari Abeydeera is a Sri Lankan-Brit/ish multidisciplinary artist, activist, Phd scholar, psychotherapist and M/Other, envisioning embodied decolonising feminist futurities through clay, dance, grassroots film-works and participative research, on unceded Dharug and Gundungurra land in the Blue Mountains of so-called Australia.
Kumari hand builds with clay and entangles her ceramic sculptures with intuitive dance as praxis and portal to ancestral knowledges, reclaiming, reweaving and reconnecting with other ways of knowing, being and world-building.
Kumari’s PhD exploration is about racialised Mother artists using creative practice as resistance against the war machine, thereby creating an-other decolonising politics of peacebuilding.
Kumari has exhibited in the Blue Mountains, Sydney and Tokyo as part of group shows and with her intersectional feminist artist collective, MWA. Kumari is in an upcoming feminist body politic exhibition in London at Outhouse Gallery in July 2025. Kumari’s current body of work entangles clay, dance, video installation and textiles to explore M/Other worlds and the materialities of grief at this moment of history with the intensifying logics of genocidal violence.
Kumari is passionate about working with marginalised communities to use clay to amplify suppressed knowledges and herstories.
Maryam Hosseini
Maryam Hosseini, born on September 8, 1994, in Afghanistan, has over 15 years of experience in the visual arts. Her work spans realism, surrealism, abstraction, impressionism, and miniature styles, using mediums such as oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, colored pencils, and charcoal. Her art focuses on human rights, especially women’s rights, conveying messages of hope, respect, and justice.
Maryam has participated in numerous exhibitions in Iran and Australia, including the 2024 World Refugee Day exhibition in Sydney and the Beyond Borders exhibition at Macquarie Bank. She has also led the Refugee Artists’ Working Group in Shahriar.
Throughout her career, Maryam has received several awards, including second place in the 2015 National Art Competition in Iran and first place in multiple local art competitions in Shahriar from 2009 to 2014. She was also a member of the Refugee Scholars and Artists Association in Iran.
As a voice for migrants and women, Maryam uses symbols such as angel wings and apples to highlight women’s beauty and strength while challenging misconceptions about women. She is passionate about continuing her artistic journey seriously and hopes to use her art to support vulnerable women and children.
Oonagh Sherrard
Composer, sound artist & producer Oonagh Sherrard is inspired by listening to the language and music of the natural world, creating sound based work on waterways including “11 Stories from the River Dyarubbin”, “Yarramundi and the People of Dyarubbin”& “South Creek/Wianamatta Turning” involving strong collaborations with Dharug knowledge-holders and community.
Paula do Prado
Paula do Prado is a visual artist, researcher and creative workshop facilitator working with various forms of tejido (weaving) based on the sovereign lands of the Gadigal and Bidjigal people. Born in Uruguay on the lands of the Charrúa Nation, she migrated to Australia in the mid 80s. Her art practice surfaces the intersections of her West African Bantu-Kongo, Iberian and Charrúa ancestral lineages. Her art practice is anchored in the Abya-Yala concept of cuerpo-territorio-espiritu (body-land-spirit) and sentipensante (feel-thinking) pathways that are indivisible from her cultural and spiritual practices, her family, community and beyond-human kin relationships.
Paula’s work has been exhibited in national and international group exhibitions, including the VIMA Cyprus Art Fair 2025, Limassol; Indian Ocean Craft Triennial (IOTA), 2024, Perth, Western Australia; The 1st and 5th Tamworth Textile Triennial touring exhibition; Tiwani Contemporary, London; Textile Biennial Rijswijk, 2019, The Netherlands; Bankstown Biennale:Sub Terrains 2022, Bankstown, and 4a Centre for Contemporary Art, Sydney. In addition to her own arts practice, Paula works as an artist in community and has previously worked with Spinifex Hill Studio Artists in Port Hedland, Wester Australia and is currently working with the GUL Collective, part of the Multicultural Women’s Hub, a program initiative of Arts and Cultural Exchange (ACE) Parramatta.
Paula holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, First Class Honours (Textiles) and an Master of Fine Arts (Research) from the University of New South Wales. She has recently completed a practice-led PhD at the University of Sydney and is a member of the Sydney Indigenous Research Network and the Sydney Environment Institute.
Shervin Mirzeinali
I identify as an Iranian-Australian composer, director, and community-driven artist. My work is deeply rooted in my cultural heritage while exploring new forms of musical expression that bridge traditions, identities, and contemporary sound worlds. I completed my Doctorate in Composition with a focus on spectralism and Iranian Dastgah, and much of my creative research continues to explore how these traditions can be reimagined through a contemporary lens.I’m especially drawn to rituals—how they hold meaning, memory, and transformation. I like to dive into them, unpack their layers, and rework them into shared creative experiences. This interest flows through both my solo and collaborative work, from composing award-winning pieces like Panbe Zan, to curating and directing cross-cultural projects. In 2023, I co-founded the Iranian Music Festival in Sydney, which has become a platform for celebrating both traditional and experimental Iranian music. Whether through sound, storytelling, or community engagement, I’m interested in how old forms can speak to new contexts, and how creative practice can open space for reflection, connection, and cultural exchange.
Shyamla Eswaran (Bindi Bosses)
Shyamla (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist, choreographer and educator who advocates for anti-discrimination through intercultural arts. They founded BINDI BOSSES, a South Asian arts company that has performed at major venues and events including Sydney Opera House and TEDxSydney. Trained in traditional Tamil artforms and practices of Yoga, Parai Attam and Silambam, Shyamla integrates cultural practice with contemporary performance. A 2020 Harmony Medal recipient, they’ve choreographed for events like Fashion Week and Schools Spectacular. With 35+ years of dance experience and a Master’s in Human Rights Law, Shyamla works with diverse communities and has featured in local and international media including ABC, VOGUE India, Homegrown India and SBS.
BINDI BOSSES is a South Asian fusion arts collective that seamlessly blends traditional and contemporary forms of dance, music, and storytelling to challenge stereotypes and celebrate culture. BINDI BOSSES is known for its powerful performances and workshops that centre inclusivity, representation and social justice. Through their bold and boundary-pushing work, BINDI BOSSES empowers communities and amplifies the voices of marginalised artists on stage, on screen, and in community. Their work has featured at major art centres, cultural festivals, Qudos Bank Arena and on the steps of Sydney Opera House.
Vishnu Arunasalam
Vishnu Arunasalam works with mediums of dance and film, drawing on his cultural identity of Sri Lankan Tamil and his training in Bharathnatyam to make sense of his experiences and the world around him. Vishnu will utilise this opportunity to begin stage 1 exploration of a new work that views rituals in the ‘urban world’ as essential for collective wellbeing through its ability for inclusion.
Wendy Qi Zhang
Wendy Qi Zhang is a Chinese Australian artist and technology researcher based on Darug land in Western Sydney. Her practice is rooted in Daoist philosophy, Buddhist meditation, and cyberfeminist thought, exploring healing through emerging technologies. Wendy works across digital media, projection, and interactive installations to explore identity, collective care, and diasporic belonging.
Metin Yilmaz
Metin Yilmaz stands as a masterful voice of the Kaval — the ancient, breath-born flute whose haunting tones echo across mountains through centuries of Anatolian and Mesopotamian tradition.
A devoted disciple of the legendary Ustad Sinan Çelik and Osman Aktaş — pioneers of Turkey’s Kaval revival and sonic innovators in their own right — Metin carries the torch of a deep-rooted musical lineage. Of Kurdish heritage and born in Turkey, his journey has unfolded across borders and continents. From the villages of Kurdistan to the stages of Europe and Australia, he has carved a path as both a revered performer and an inspired recording artist.
For over a decade, Metin was based in Cologne, Germany — a crossroads of culture — where he brought the ancient sound of the Kaval into dialogue with global traditions. He graced German television, the Cologne Jazz Festival, and stages across Europe, blending the earthy soul of his roots with the language of contemporary music.
This is not merely music. It is a journey—carried on the breath of the past, unfolding into the present, and calling us toward something eternal.
Damian Wright
Damian Wright is an ARIA nominated Flamenco guitarist. Damian recently released his debut album “Shifting Sands” (ABC Music) which was The Sydney Morning Heralds ‘Pick of the week’ where it was described as “Glorious guitar playing”. Damian was invited to perform as a solo artist at The Rajasthan International Folk Festival, INDIA and in 2016 performed at The Shanghai Fringe Festival, CHINA. Damian’s ensemble BANDALUZIA was invited to perform at the biannual Adelaide International Guitar Festival curated by Slava Grigoryan & was a soloist at The Sydney International Guitar festival in 2017 & 2018. BANDALUZIA was awarded "The Pick Of the Sydney Fringe" at The Sydney Fringe Festival and performed to a sold out Sydney Opera House Concert Hall as an invited artist to TEDX Sydney 2014. BANDALUZIA has headlined The International Gypsy Music Festival, Sydney, The Global Carnival and is on Musica Viva's national touring program. In 2010 Damian received a development grant from the Australian arts council to study flamenco guitar in Spain with Pepe Justicia, where he spent five years. Damian has recorded with ensembles RASA DUENDE & THE TRANSLATORS on ABC/Universal and Jazzgroove Records and his compositions have been played on ABC radio national and ABC Classic FM.
HOLDING SPACE is funded by the NSW Government through the Multicultural NSW COMPACT Program.
Our project collaborators are SSI’s Community Refugee Welcome Centre located at Callan Park, Lilyfield, and Community Partners Sydney Opera House.