Tina Stefanou
Tina Stefanou’s recent year spent living and working in rural Western Australia amidst shifting political and environmental terrains has shaped how she chooses to engage and communicate within the arts. Her practice contemplates how neoliberalism and global class dynamics infiltrate our day-to-day lives, sense of self, bodies, practices, and relationships, affecting how we connect and cultivate liberation for one another and the planet. Beneath the surface of what may seem merely practical in the business of living, she uncovers undercurrents—subtle entitlements reliant on the obscured labour of hidden figures. Her collaborative filmic traces, performance environments, singing objects, and fieldwork advocate for a dance into stranger solidarities and proximities—a sidestep into the gaps of understanding that hold the potential for other forms of sharing and contributing to the cultural commons. In an era marked by the sixth great extinction, she embraces vocality in an expanded sense—to play, to soothe, to cross-over, to incite, to destabilise, and to gather. Voice as belonging, as anti-administrata, animality, multi-species hospice, minor sociality, tactility, disart, as post-nationalism, as poetic sludge, as conveying sonorities and affects that words and images alone cannot reproduce.
Stefanou has performed, presented, published and exhibited nationally and internationally including: Salt Museum (Istanbul); Kadist Gallery (Paris); Le Pavé d’Orsay (Paris); the University of Music and Performing Arts (Graz); Residency Corazon Gallery (La Plata); The Yellow House (Sydney); The Sydney Opera House; Stacks Projects (Sydney); Festaal (Berlin); Carriageworks (Sydney); Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne); The Ian Potter Museum (Melbourne); Blindside Gallery (Melbourne); Perth Institute of Contemporary Art; McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park (Langwarrin); Hamer Hall (Melbourne); Phoenix Central Park (SYD); University of Western Australia (Perth); Australian Centre of Contemporary Art (Melbourne); National Gallery of Victoria; Museum of Old and New Art (Tasmania); American Anthropology Association (NY); Rosi Braidotti Posthuman Artist Labs (Utrecht University); 3ecologies Project (Canada); Buxton Contemporary (Melbourne); The Substation (Melbourne); Sarah Scout Presents (Melbourne); Composite Gallery (Melbourne); Collingwood Yards Arts Precinct (Melbourne); Disclaimer Journal; Journal of Sonic Studies; and Cordite Poetry Review.
She has worked with organisations such as: Liquid Architecture; Art + Australia online; Women’s Art Register; Alpha60; Erth Visual & Physical Inc; Chiara Guidi; SPACED; Young Voices Melbourne; West Australian Opera; DADAA Gallery; The North Midlands Project; Art Gallery of Western Australia; The Australian Art Orchestra; Centre of Visual Art; Speak Percussion; Cementa; RMIT’s non/fictionLab; ADSR Zine; Semi Permanent; Centre for Projection Art; Project Anywhere; and Chamber Made.
Stefanou has won an Australian Art Music Award for Excellence in Experimental Music with The Music Box Project (2020); Schenberg Arts Fellowship (2020); Marten Bequest Scholarship (2021); City of Melbourne Arts Grant (2022); SPACED Residency (2022-23) and was a finalist in the 67th Blake Prize and Incinerator Art Award (2022). She is a recipient of the Local Nillumbik Contemporary Art Prize, and CultureLAB development program with ACCA and Arts House (2023-24). In 2023, she was featured in a survey of prominent Victorian artists in the Melbourne Now exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, received Art Projects for Individuals funding from Creative Australia and launched new arts aggregation The Opera Company as Artistic Director. In 2024, Stefanou will feature in the Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia. She is currently a PhD candidate at the faculty of Fine Arts and Music, VCA, University of Melbourne.