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HOLDING SPACE 2025: Rituals of Welcome Artist Panel

Artist Panel
2025

HOLDING SPACE is a three year annual program of artistic commissions, creative developments, workshops, public programs and events that aims to provide a provocation and a forum to share cultural and creative ideas, experiences, understandings and learnings centred around belonging and community connectedness. In 2025, the theme was Rituals of Welcome. Learn more about the 18 artists here.

On the 28th of November 2025, in the Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House, the Rituals of Welcome showcase unfolded over three parts – Part 1 – Performance: Connection and contemplation; Part 2 – Artist Panel: Ancestral practices, rites and ceremonies in contemporary life; Part 3 – Community Celebration. You can view the full run-down of that day here.

The artist panel consisted of the following artists Jacinta Tobin, Wendy Qi Zhang, Hosna Saif, Paula do Prado & Vishnu Arunasalam. Moderated by CuriousWorks's Senior Creative Producer, Vandana Ram, the artist panel was a rich conversation that dived into the role of rituals of welcome, exploring First Nation and culturally diverse ancestral and contemporary practices, their meaning and relevance in our world today. What do rituals offer us as transformative processes, that encourage connectedness within and across cultures and communities, human and non-human? 

View the full artist panel video below:

 

About 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.
About 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.
About Hosna Saif
Hosna Saif is an artist originally from Afghanistan, now living in Australia. She is currently studying law whilst exploring her passions in art-making. She is dedicated to making a difference through both her creativity and her future legal career.
About 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.
 
About 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 has been exploring the views of rituals in the ‘urban world’ as essential for collective wellbeing through its ability for inclusion.
About Vandana Ram
Vandana brings deep experience in community-based arts practice and cultural development to CuriousWorks.
 
Vandana has been directly involved in the growth of community cultural development as a practice in Australia – helping to shape and advocate for it as an embedded practice for artists and communities. Specifically, she has over 20 years of expertise working in the arts for Western Sydney, most recently as the founding Director of Bankstown Arts Centre, as well as extensive experience in curation, policy, arts management, and public art, developing successful community partnerships along the way.
 
She is also a practising visual artist exploring migration, and colonisation as well as the histories and geographies of Western Sydney.

CREDITS

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.

The 2025 HOLDING SPACE artists are Damon Amb, Elizabeth Jigalin, Ezra Mukendi, Hosna Saif, Jacinta Tobin, Jessica Tobin, Justine Youssef, Kumari Abeydeera, Maryam Hosseini, Oonagh Sherrard, Paula do Prado, Shervin Mirzeinali, Shyamla Eswaran (Bindi Bosses), Vishnu Arunasalam, Wendy Qi Zhang, Metin Yilmaz, Damian Wright, Guillermo Robayo Gómez & Black Feather Circle.

Cover photo taken by Damon Amb.

Video was shot by Diego Murillo and edited by Samantha Barahona.

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Our office is located on Darug land at Fairfield City HQ. We would like to acknowledge the Cabrogal Clan of the Darug Nation, the traditional custodians of the land. Our work takes us across Darug, Dharawal and Eora lands. Sovereignty was never ceded.