Blindside facilitates an annual Emerging Curator Mentorship program, where an emerging curator is mentored by a leading Naarm arts professional.

They have partnered with Next Wave to deliver the 2025 program – selecting emerging curator Rasha Tayeh (Beit e’Shai) to be mentored by Next Wave CEO Elyse Goldfinch to realise the next iteration of her ongoing arts project: compost : compose.

compost : compose is an arts project created by Rasha, hosting discussions, exhibitions, performances, and pop-up events across various ecologies and geographies.

Learn more about the Blindside Emerging Curator Mentorship with Rasah Tayeh.

About Rasha Tayeh

Rasha Tayeh is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, researcher, herbalist and founding director of Beit e’Shai Teahouse. Her practice is land-based , focusing on telling stories about people’s relationships in community & ecology. With over 20 years experience as an exhibiting artist in Australia and abroad, and through her pop-up teahouse since 2017, Rasha has curated and hosted a range of art exhibitions, workshops, community events, live gigs and listening sessions, tea ceremonies and poetry nights.

Taking inspiration from the soil, we compost old structures, let go, tend to grief, and decompose old ways of thinking, doing and being to find ways to compose new imaginaries.

compost : compose is an arts project created by artist-curator Rasha Tayeh, inviting artists to reflect on the purpose of art in times of ongoing genocide, social decay and climate crisis.

Performance:

Through a live performance weaving music, poetry, and movement, the work responds to Rasha Tayeh’s ongoing project compost : compose, which asks: how we might compost old structures, tend to grief, and decompose inherited ways of thinking, doing, and being, to make space for composing new imaginaries — rooted in care, repair, and collective liberation.

What might become possible when we gather, listen and compose new realities together?

Join us in an evening of performance-based art of old and new compositions. Featuring artists mohamed chamas, Allara, and Ysk.

mohamed chamas has been called a poet and new media artist {among many other things either erroneous or partially-correct}. Mohamed re-enchants subjective worlds from the space between heresy and miracle, where sacred rage and ecstatic dissolution are invited. Mohamed agitates language, cyberspace, gamification, the military-entertainment complex, occult studies and spirituality. They defy form dancing with hybridity across poetry, live visuals, interactive work, image, video, spatial installation and sculpture. Namely they create interactive VR work that is activated by ceremonial performance and/or spatial altar. Their work has been witnessed through platforms like Debris Magazine, Emerging Writers Festival, Mars Gallery, Incinerator Gallery, Seventh Gallery and 7 news.

Allara is a staunch Yorta Yorta artist - songwoman, bassist, producer and sound-designer. Living on Wurundjeri, Woi-Wurrung Country for almost 15 years, her motivation is driven by a hope of healing and self-determination. Her fire within, is ignited by the resilience of yenbana-l and woka-n mulana. Allara’s unrelenting commitment to collapse colonial structures, inspires her work in all fields, and is based in growing native knowledge resurgence, through wholehearted blak joy… AND crop dusting seeds of resistance, in every corner of every lawn. F**K the colony.

Ysk, born Yusuke Akai, was born in 1983 in Tokyo, Japan. As a guitarist, drummer, modular synthesist, composer, bandleader and educator, Ysk has extensive performance experiences across Eurasia in places such as Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Netherlands, Germany, Scotland, France, Belgium and more. Ysk has been awarded with numerous grants and artist residencies from institutions such as Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Queensland, AsiaLink, University of Melbourne, Melbourne Polytechnic, etc. Their recent composition commissions have been delivered for ensembles such as Australian Art Orchestra, SuperFeather, Taste of Teeth, Sky Voltage, Brett Evans Quartet and various film and theatre projects. Ysk considers their boxing, capoeira, and dance practices as relevant to the musical outputs. Also relevant are the social, cultural, and political worldviews and the continuous learning and analyses of the selves and contexts.

Wednesday 18 February, 7pm – 8.30pm
Tickets from $10

Public Program:

How can we compost old structures, tend to grief, and decompose inherited ways of thinking, doing, and being – and compose new imaginaries for reparative futures and collective liberation.

Join us for a conversation with artists Allara, Mohamed Chamas and Ysk, with performances from Sarah Iman, Mwaffaq Al-Hajjar and DT.

Moderated by Shalini Kunahlan

Shalini Kunahlan has worked in book publishing for over a decade. She’s currently the Group Head of Marketing and Communications at Hardie Grant Publishing, and independent book publisher in Melbourne. As a proud Malaysian with Sri Lankan Tamil Heritage living in Australia, she is a dedicated and active participant in promoting and building diversity outcomes in the industry. Shalini was the recipient of the inaugural Australian book industry rising star award in recognition for her work and is currently on the board of directors for the Emerging Writers Festival.

About the artists performing

Sarah Iman is a Malaysian born, Naarm raised writer, performer and facilitator. They work mainly in the community arts sector, including St Martins Youth Theatre, Western Edge, NextWave and Music Victoria. Sarah’s current interests lies in movement practices and poetry as forms of community building. Their work is an inquiry into grief, growing and loving, particularly from the migrant diasporic and intergenerational lens.

Mwaffaq Al-Hajjar is a Syrian poet, artist, and researcher whose work moves between literature, performance, and visual art. Holding an MA in Comparative Literature, his poetry explores unhomeness, remembrance, spatial justice, and the politics of the self. He is the author of Poetic Entropy (2019) and A City in Debt, A Hole in the Head (2024), and has contributed to several anthologies. In 2017, he was awarded the Poetry Prize for Refugees in Kuala Lumpur. His practice includes public readings, interdisciplinary collaborations, theatre acting and visual art. Mwaffaq has performed and published across Syria, Malaysia, Singapore, Qatar and Australia.

DT is a Djab Wurrung Aboriginal MC born and raised on Yorta Yorta Country in Shepparton, rising from Western Victoria. New artist on the rise known for his insightful storylelling through powerful, thought-provoking lyrics that blend street knowledge with cultural wisdom.

Drawing from his deep-rooted connection to his Djab Wurrung heritage and the extensive knowledge shared by Elders from many tribes and clans across Australia, DT speaks on his experiences of the world, seamlessly intertwining his past present, and future with his Aboriginal identity.

Big on knowledge sharing DT’s music flows with the vibrations of his lineage, aiming to connect with both his ancestors and future generations.

Saturday 21 February, 3pm – 5pm
Free, please RSVP