Thesis Working Title: Objects In-between: Designing a Visual language for Traversing Personal Identity, Migration and Intercultural Spaces.

Supervisor(s):  Dr Christina Clarke, Dr Rohan Nicol

Topic:  My PhD project draws on the material culture around contemporary design and craft traditions to articulate identity from an intercultural context. These ideas are framed within the context of place, home and object. Personal collections of objects are analysed through taxonomy as a way to synthesize interdisciplinary studio investigations combining graphic animations with contemporary jewellery and object processes to develop a visual system that examines cross-cultural translations. Central to the research is the notion of hybridity as a third space identity informed by my personal narratives living as a migrant living in Sydney, Australia. My final series of object-based works create a tangible experience in understanding cultural hybridity from my experience as a Southeast Asian Australian woman and further represent a perspective of Australia’s unique complex cultural realities.

My completion date is anticipated for November 2021.

Further interests:  I am a designer, maker working within the practice of contemporary craft, jewellery and objects. I draw on traditional and contemporary crafts methods and technology, inspired by my cultural heritage to communicate narratives based on personal cross-cultural concepts. With strengths in metal technologies and specialisation in Asian lacquer, the synthesis of these materials combine to develop new methods to the making and meanings of contemporary object practice. Recent projects have used interdisciplinary approaches in graphic language and animation to explore the experiences bounded by my personal emigrational routes and cultural objects.

Upon graduation I wish to pursue research in pedagogical taxonomy around object theory and investigate interdisciplinary designing through contemporary craft practices. I will keep developing innovative surface techniques using casting technology to expand methods in sheet pattern production to pursue my passion in the making of objects.