Area Discourse

Area Discourse III: To Represent

Join us for a discussion with artist Gillian Kayrooz and Claire Dillon, art historian, and contributor to Khaled Sabsabi’s Venice Biennale catalogue ‘the companion’.

Save the Date – Saturday 21 November

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Area Discourse II: To Love

The second iteration of Area Discourse: To Love presents stories of Queer and Trans love in Western Sydney and India.

We will be screening Tara, directed by Ashutosh S. Shankar and produced by Zena Sagar, Inheritance and Bikes, directed by Mohammed Awad.

These films explore nuances within love, identity and solidarity.

Date: Saturday 22 June, 2-4pm AEST

Location: RS1, Utp, Bankstown Arts Centre, 5 Olympic Parade, Bankstown NSW

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This event is a safe space for LGBTQIA+ communities and allies.

About the films:

Tara is the story of a 26-year-old Dalit trans woman who meets a singer named Aman at a queer party, sparking an immediate connection. The film explores the complexities of intersectionality, love, and the quiet resilience of those navigating layered marginalisations in a modern, urban India.

Directed by Ashutosh S. Shankar and produced by Zena Sagar

In Inheritance, the death of his father compels Ameen to confront a home, and a past, he left behind years ago. An intimate, and at times funny, portrait of grief, reconciliation and family politics, as siblings squabble over their late father’s estate.

Directed by Mohammad Awad

Suitable for viewers aged 15+ years unless accompanied by an adult

Content warning: Please be aware that this film contains elements of horror, transphobic and homophobic language.

Bikes is an intimate exploration of queer love in Western Sydney in two parts, immersing the viewer in the lives of queer people either in love or looking for love, while retelling a story of queer romance and heartbreak. Debunking the myth that queer and trans people need to leave their Western Sydney homes to find love, joy and intimacy.

Directed by Mohammad Awad

About the artists:

Mohammad Awad is an award-winning writer, director, poet, playwright, producer, musician, author and involuntary artist who is running out of ways to express himself. They are the creative director of FULL FAT PRODUCTIONS, a company focused on elevating unapologetic QTBIPOC voices onto the big screen. 

Mohammad’s first film Bikes premiered at the Sydney Opera House. Their film Inheritance won the national Queer Screen Pitch-Off and had its world premiere at Mardi Gras Film Festival where they won the Emerging Filmmaker Award. Its international premiere will be at the Iris Prize Film Festival. Their latest film FLIGHT RISK premiered at Melbourne Queer Film Festival and won the MQFF Pitch Prize and is headed to Frameline Festival, St Kilda, the Sydney Opera House and beyond in 2026. Their first feature, BALL AND CHAIN, is in development with Nicholas Weinstock's LA-based Invention Studios and supported by Screen NSW.  

A development and reading of Mohammad's play Harami debuted at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2023, alongside award-winning director Tasnim Hossain. Mohammad is also a recent Alumni of ATYP’s Fresh Ink program - Australia’s most competitive program for emerging playwrights. 

Honoured as Australia's National Youth Poetry Champion, they have also featured in the Sydney Writers Festival, Sydney Opera House, Sydney Mardi Gras and World Pride, Art Gallery of NSW, The ICC, The Iconic West Ball, Big Thick Energy, Sydney Living Museums - After Dark,Out for Australia's ‘30 under 30’, The Vanguard and Giant Dwarf Theatre. As well as being featured on ABC’s hit TV Show ‘Space 22’, The Drum and SBS. 

Zena Sagar is an India-based impact producer/filmmaker and one of the country’s first trans women in producing, coming from a Dalit background. She is an alumna of the Producing for Film & Television program at the Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata, where she was among the first dalit-transgender students to openly enter and navigate the campus space. 

Zena produced her debut short film, TARA, which premiered at the San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival and continues its festival and impact journey. Her work centres on amplifying marginalised voices, with a larger focus on building long-term cultural infrastructure and authorship for underrepresented communities in media, alongside developing long-term capacity building programs and ecosystem in media. Beyond filmmaking, Zena has led and contributed to multiple large-scale digital advocacy efforts regarding trans rights and representation. 

Her work has included mobilising more than 150,000 emails directed to the Parliament of India as part of trans rights advocacy efforts, and collaborating with over 1,000 creators to build and grow a digital community called Queers Against Trans bill from the ground up to more than 10,000+ followers. Her advocacy work sits at the intersection of storytelling, digital organising and community mobilisation. She is currently actively building her artistic practice through different mediums and expressions. 

Area Discourse I: To Memorialise

The first event in the series, To Memorialise brought two projects into conversation, Cups of nun chai led by artist Alana Hunt with publisher, filmmaker and founder of Yaarbal Books, Sanjay Kak and; Remembering ‘89: Memorial and Archive led by activist Nilvala Vijayasiri and artist Jagath Dheerasekara, members of the Remembering ‘89 collective. 

Join the guest artists and activists as they discussed the projects and their interventions in keeping memory as a form of resistance, operating as archivists and allies within state sponsored systems of oppression and censorship.

Date: Saturday 20 June, 2-6:30pm AEST

Location: RS1, Utp, Bankstown Arts Centre, 5 Olympic Parade, Bankstown NSW

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Event Highlights

Photo by Jessica Olivieri

Photo by Denis Beaubois

Photo by Jessica Olivieri

About the projects: 

This event marks the 10th anniversary of the serialisation of Cups of nun chai in 86 editions of the newspaper Kashmir Reader from June 2016 - April 2017. Published as a book by Yaarbal Books in 2020, Cups of nun chai records the sharing of 118 cups of nun chai, and just as many conversations. Each cup formed a requiem for 118 people killed by the state amidst pro-freedom protests that shook the Kashmir valley during the summer of 2010. Like a storm in a tea cup, the work brews an archive of small moments that move against the normalisation of political violence.

Read this article Alana Hunt with Sanjay Kak: A conversation about Kashmir on Artlink to learn more. This article is available to readers without a subscription for a limited time in the lead-up to this event, thanks to the generosity of the artists and Artlink.

The Remembering ‘89: Memorial and Archive is dedicated to people who were killed or disappeared by the State during the 1987-1990 Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) led Uprising in the ‘South’ of Sri Lanka. As an independent initiative founded by a group of survivors of the 1987–1990 Uprising and their children, it seeks to preserve and enliven the memory of activists, supporters and sympathisers who were killed, disappeared, imprisoned, tortured, or persecuted during one of the most violent periods in Sri Lanka’s modern history.

Jashn-e-Azadi (How we celebrate freedom)

It’s 15th August, India’s Independence day, and the Indian flag goes up in the heart of Srinagar, Kashmir. But the empty streets and the sullen silence that greet India's claim on Kashmir spark off old questions about freedom – azadi – and the denial of freedom. In the aftermath of 18 years of an armed struggle, with 60,000 dead and nearly 7,000 missing, death and loss is everywhere.

Sometimes this loss is marked by the dozen's of ‘martyr's graveyards’ that dot the valley; sometimes in the process of being uncovered as we follow a group of men involved in a ‘survey of death’; sometimes expressed in the fractured minds of ordinary Kashmiris we encounter in the Psychiatric Ward of a city hospital. As Kashmiris begin to look within their ledger of loss, we slowly prise open the meanings of Kashmir's struggle for Azadi, freedom. Using a beguiling mix of verite footage, rare archival material, poetry and text, this a provocative look at Indian democracy in the 60th year of India's independence, and a reflection on power, resistance and “freedom’s terrible thirst”.

About the artists:

Alana Hunt is a non-Indigenous artist working across visual art, filmmaking, literature, social engagement, and illicit public interventions. Her practice is grounded in lived experience in Australia and South Asia and shaped by a long-term, forensic approach to research. She has worked with journalists, filmmakers, human rights defenders and lawyers, to create work that resonates within the communities it grows from, and the worlds beyond. 

Since 2009 Alana has worked in Kashmir examining the state’s violence and the need for self-determination. Cups of nun chai, a decade-long iterative memorial formed by conversations with 118 people across Australia, India and Kashmir, was serialised in 86 editions of a daily newspaper in Kashmir, and later became a book now entering its third reprint with Yaarbal Books. 

Sanjay Kak is an independent documentary filmmaker and writer whose recent work includes the films Red Ant Dream (2013) Jashn-e-Azadi (2007) and Words on Water (2002). He is the editor of the anthology Until My Freedom Has Come – The New Intifada in Kashmir and of the photobook, Witness – Kashmir 1986-2016, 9 Photographers which he published independently under the imprint of Yaarbal Books. At Yaarbal he has also edited and published the recent Cups of nun chai by Alana Hunt. 

Nilvala Vijayasiri works in the medical sector. She serves as the convener of the Remembering ’89 Collective. During Sri Lanka’s 1987–1990 Uprising, as a university student, she played a significant role in the Students for Human Rights, contributing to the documentation of human rights violations and in related advocacy efforts. 

Jagath Dheerasekara is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice draws on personal and collective memory, the legacies of colonisation, and the fragility of humanity’s principles. He lives and works in Gandangara Country in Western Sydney. 

Watch this space for more events in the series. Sign up to our newsletter to stay up to date.

Cover artwork by Eddie Abd

PARTNERS AND SUPPORTERS

These projects are supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW and the Neilson Foundation.

This projects have been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

Utp is supported by venue partner City of Canterbury Bankstown.