Join us for an immersive sound performance by Sancintya Mohini Simpson as she activates her installation Vessel (iteration #5), currently on view as part of the exhibition ‘Artist’s Rooms: Sancintya Mohini Simpson’.

As a descendant of indentured labourers, Simpson seeks to address the ongoing legacy of intergenerational trauma. Her performance, par-parā / phus-phusā, combines experimental sound and the body to offer audiences a shared experience of sonic remembering and healing.

Following her performance, Sancintya will be joined in conversation by Dubai-based artist Shazia Salam to discuss the role of sound in their respective practices and the experience of diaspora across time and across continents.

Sancintya Mohini Simpson (b. 1991, lives and works in Meanjin/Brisbane) is a descendant of indentured labourers sent from India to work on colonial sugar plantations in South Africa. Her work navigates the complexities of migration, memory and trauma—addressing gaps and silences within the colonial archive. Simpson’s work moves between painting, video, poetry and performance in order to develop narratives and construct rituals that reflect on her maternal lineage.

Recent exhibitions include ‘Tales of Land and Sea’, Bundanon, New South Wales (2024); ‘ām / ammā / mā maram’, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2023); ‘Indigo Waves and Other Stories: Re-Navigating the Afrasian Sea and Notions of Diaspora’, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2023); TarraWarra Biennial 2023: ‘ua usiusi faʻavaʻasavili’, Healesville; Busan Biennale 2022: ‘We, on the Rising Wave’, Museum of Contemporary Art Busan; ‘Staple: What’s on your plate?’, Hayy Jameel, Jeddah (2021).

Simpson’s poetry has been published in Artist Profile, Correspondence (The Physics Room), Cordite Poetry Review, and Peril magazine. Her work is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Jameel, Dubai; KADIST, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; UQ Art Museum, Brisbane; and Museum of Brisbane.

Shazia Salam (b.1992, lives and works in Dubai) is an interdisciplinary artist. Situated in environments of work and play, her practice follows transmission lines involved in cultural production and examines constructs of being within capitalist systems. Her work engages with corporate agreements, shop signages, children’s toys, and other instruments of dissemination.

Her first solo show ‘Voice-Over-Voice-’ opened in Tashkeel, Dubai (2023) following her participation in the 2022 Tashkeel Critical Practice Programme. She has been a recipient of the Dharti Arts Residency, Delhi (2019). Commissioned projects include ‘An Offer from the Desert’, Public Art Abu Dhabi (2024); ‘Walking Memorials: Endeavours of Reading Silence’, Jameel Arts Center, Dubai (2022). She holds a PG Diploma from the University of Arts London (2018) and a BArch. from Manipal University (2015).

Largely drawn from the Art Jameel Collection, ‘Artist’s Rooms’ is a series of capsule solo exhibitions, curated in collaborative dialogue with the artist.