MAV has a profound commitment to arts and artists shaping the narratives that define who we are as a multicultural nation.
Meet the artists and communities
Pop Music Artist
Lah Eh Soe is an 18-year-old Pop artist from Thai Land who currently lives in Bendigo Australia. Lah Eh Soe has been making music for 1 year and is influenced by artists like Post Malone, Eminem and XXXtentacion.
Musician
Jai Atkinson (AKA KibbZ) is a 23 year old man living on Dja Dja wurrung country with connection to Yorta Yorta people. Jai uses Hip-Hop music as a medium to express and share his views and observations of his surroundings. Jai has been creating beats and lyrics since the age of 13 and in the last 5 years has developed a program to share his skills and experience with like minded youth.
Composer, Trombone Player and Band Manager
Aryo is an Indonesian-Australian composer, trombone player, and band manager currently based in Castlemaine. He specialises in Jazz, Latin, Balkan Gypsy, and Gamelan music and has performed extensively around Australia and internationally. Born in Yogyakarta, he began playing music from a very young age, press-ganged by his parents who are well known Gamelan teachers. He studied classical euphonium and jazz trombone and was drawn to the thriving tradition of Gypsy Brass. His ambition is to lead a gamelan-fusion project that would embrace the traditional music of central Java and the processes of contemporary improvisation.
Animator and Illustrator
Shirin is an Iranian-Australian animator and illustrator. She works across a variety of media including digital painting and video animation. Her body of work conveys themes of collective memories and visually encapsulates a vast range of cultural influence, Persian literature, issues in modern cultures, and philosophical allusions. She reaches her visual goals by combining different art forms and seeking new means of expression through those established mediums. She recently graduated from a bachelor of fine art in animation.
Dancer
Aroha Pehi is a proud Darrriebullum, Kuku-Yalnji, Ngāphui and Ngātiporou woman from South-East Queensland with strong ties to the Shepparton community. A graduate of NAISDA Dance College, she works as a freelance dancer based in Sydney. She co-founded ‘Lost All Sorts Collective’, a contemporary dance theatre collective producing works focused on Indigenous issues. Aroha has started to explore new art expressions, such as writing and dance on film.
Musician and Artist
BER is an eighteen year old musician and artist from Victoria, Australia, hailing from Dja Dja Wurrung Country (Bendigo) and now living on Wurundjeri Land. She is currently studying at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, where she hopes to expand her musical knowledge and technical capability. She is passionate about the ocean, and scuba dives. She hopes to one day join ocean clean-ups to protect the marine life and ecosystems. You'll often find her in little niche shops, supporting small businesses or in op shops. Her music is available to listen to on all streaming platforms.
Explore the works
Le’aisa Pele
Food means a great deal in our family and plays a very important part in our culture and community. In Samoa, no one eats alone. We do not cook small meals, we cook for everyone and we all eat together.
Shakilla Naveed
Since moving to Australia, the way we cook and eat has changed a lot. In Australia. I have tried very hard to involve my husband and my children in cooking meals but back in my country, the mother or wife only would cook.
Yusniza Yusoff
“I love to cook. I love sharing my food with my friends and neighbours, my community because I feel happy when people enjoy my food."
Ane Fotu
Fakamaloía he polokalama Shepparton Culture Kitchen, he ngaahi faingamalie kuo ne ómai kia te au mo hoku famili óu lava ai ke vahevahe hoku úlungaanga faka-fonua
Ree Peric
Ree is a young Fijian-Croatian woman who was exposed to a wide variety of different cultures from a young age through her mother’s missionary work in Brisbane. Ree also lived in Uganda for some time, where she learned to cook things like nsenene (grasshopper) and fufu with her grandparents.
Khalid Farah
FlatMates was collated as a response to the 9-tower lockdown of 2020 in North Melbourne and Flemington.
We make art as a visceral response to the forces of bigotry and intolerance, which seek to undermine the hard-fought battle for pluralism.
We make art to understand who we are as migrants on Indigenous land.
We make art to draw attention to the work that is still needed to future proof our identity as a society that deeply values its diversity.
Arts as diverse as our people.
We champion culturally diverse artists and communities to create systems of cultural production and participation that uphold equity and self-determination.
We champion culturally diverse artists and communities
We privilege non-western ways of doing, knowing and being, to tell stories that illuminate our humanity and improve intercultural understanding;
We strive for cultural democracy, sharing our knowledge and skills with partners across the arts and cultural sector to build platforms for engagement and visibility;
Diverse communities see themselves represented in and by us, in work that resonates with their truths, underpinned by shared values and dreams of new futures; and
We are outspoken in our support of cultural participation as a human right, from which we derive social, cultural and economic benefits for the development of individuals and society.