Kudos acknowledges and pays respect to the Gadigal and Bidjigal people of the Eora nation. They are the traditional custodians of the land Kudos operates on. We create, design, share, and exchange our work and knowledge on this important meeting place. We pay our respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to any First Nations people who engage with Kudos. This is and always will be Aboriginal land.
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Pain: Red as A Condition
I am an artist and independent curator based in Sydney, currently completing a Master of Curating and Cultural Leadership at UNSW. Because my own practice is rooted in sculpture and photography, my curatorial approach is inherently spatial. I am deeply invested in the physical realities of how artworks inhabit a space, and I strive to build environments where emerging artists are supported to test ambitious, experimental ideas. My curatorial framework is driven by an ongoing research interest in the operational models of Australian Artist-Run Initiatives (ARIs) and the material realities of early-career practitioners. Rather than remaining purely theoretical, I apply this research directly to grassroots facilitation. Most recently, I co-founded Period Gallery—a non-profit pop-up in Newtown—alongside Reagan Ren and Leila Hu, exploring alternative models of collective support and sustainable exhibition-making. My independent practice is kept grounded by the day-to-day realities of the arts sector, supported by my ongoing involvement in exhibition installation and public engagement at the Biennale of Sydney and the Head On Photo Festival. As a curator, my focus remains on bridging structural research with hands-on facilitation to cultivate sustainable, community-driven platforms for creatives.
In structuring the physical space, I wanted the exhibition to ground itself immediately in the corporeal body. I was deeply drawn to how Wang Dichen and Holli Davidson both use their own somatic experiences as starting points. Wang translates chronic aches into an intimate emotional cartography, while Holli’s fragmented collages capture the profound estrangement of living with distress. To push this bodily exploration further, I placed their works alongside pieces that physically construct or restrict boundaries. Shen Lan’s crochet installations actively redefine "wholeness" by embracing misaligned grids and loopholes as a soft sanctuary. In stark contrast, Audrey Yaqi Ouyang’s interactive installation imposes physical constraint on the viewer, manifesting the psychosocial pressure and identity anxiety of a highly educated generation navigating the AI era.
As the curation moves from the physical to the internal, it explores how we process trapped emotions and fragile identities. Urania Liu’s water marbling visualizes unspoken memories as slow, spreading flows—a reminder that when pain lacks words, the body takes over. Joana Duarte’s video of family photos dissolving in water struck me as a perfect reflection of the emotional exhaustion required to maintain our personal archives and histories. In dialogue with this internal dissonance, Mila Piccardi’s screenprints explore the dislocation of navigating a binary world as a nonbinary person, creating profound self-portraits that deliberately leave the physical body out of the frame.
Ultimately, the exhibition broadens its lens to look at how we navigate the overwhelming external structures around us. Yao Yao’s digital work captures the dizzying anxiety of being relentlessly pushed forward by societal expectations. Yet, there is a quiet endurance woven throughout the space. Ning Shuai’s folded structures delicately examine the boundaries between architecture and space, while Zihan Shuai’s use of traditional ink and mineral pigments captures a botanical form suspended between decay and renewal.
As a curator, my intention wasn't to offer a "cure" for these experiences. Through Pain: Red as A Condition, I wanted to hold space for vulnerability, proving that life, much like pain itself, persistently reasserts its presence through the ongoing cycles of destruction and time.