About the Speakers
Leonie Leivenzon
Leonie Leivenzon is a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her background as a GP and hypnotherapist led to her interest in addressing dualisms which dominate Western thinking and exploring how we can learn to exist comfortably with unknowns. It is in these moments of ambiguity that we become open to the possibility of understanding, bridging the gaps between memory, experience, and belief. She is currently undertaking The Future Histories Project which involves visiting second-hand bookstores and searching for books where something was forgotten inside by the donor. Using collecting as a methodology for creating moments of questioning while exploring the nature of objects and their ability to embody history, these books and discarded makeshift bookmarks serve as the catalysts for her work. Leonie primarily uses discarded and second-hand materials as inspiration and in the making of her work, allowing her to explore a wide range of different materials, themes, and concepts.
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Bea Rubio-Gabriel
Bea Rubio-Gabriel is a writer, performance artist, and curator born in the Philippines now living and working in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Approaching writing as artform and ephemera, they use ergodic texts and homemade books to create new modes of access and dismantle dominant knowledge and power structures. Using performance, they explore pre-colonial writing systems (Baybayin) and how languages of the past can be activated as cultural imaginaries for the utopian present. Currently interrogating systems of care and Resistance Aesthetics, they challenge current curatorial and euro-centric modes of exhibiting by approaching the curatorial as its own artistic medium; grounded in rhizomatic ways of care and collectivisation. Their research currently focuses on the moral economy of labour, care critique, and the politics of translation.
IMAGE > Courtsey of the Speaker