Engages,

Noriko Nakamura, Sista Zai Zanda, and Sheena Colquhoun Departed Acts at the Abbotsford Convent

Bus Projects is pleased to present the fifth iteration of Departed Acts, a performance-lecture series with the Abbotsford Convent in the C3 Forecourt. Departed Acts invites Victorian artists, writers and curators to recall the experience of a pivotal experience that has influenced their practice.

Departed Acts at the Abbotsford Convent will feature Melbourne artists Noriko Nakamura, Sista Zai Zanda, and Sheena Colquhoun.

Departed Acts embraces poetic, emotional, contentious, and contradictory readings as important components in mnemonic thought processes. It is conducted with varying degrees of visual accompaniment, and with a critical playfulness towards the lecture format. Rather than focussing on objective testimony, Departed Acts embraces the tangential nature of recollection, allowing for the factual and fictitious to intertwine. Intended as an open-ended, train-of-thought exercise, Departed Acts allows space for a personal, freely associative discourse, intending to provide a deeper and more intimate understanding of the creative process.

Noriko Nakamura
Noriko Nakamura completed a Fine Art Foundation Diploma at Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, University of the Arts London, before receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts and BA Fine Arts Honours from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2012. Nakamura experiments with the transformational potential of materials in order to explore the relationship that exists between humans and the material world. She has presented solo exhibitions at Gertrude Glasshouse, Collingwood, Daine Singer, Melbourne; Sutton Projects, Melbourne; West Space, Melbourne; TCB art inc., Melbourne. Her work has been exhibited at Aperto, Montpellier France; XYZ Collective, Tokyo; RM gallery, Auckland; Dog Park Art Project Space, Christchurch; Murray White Room, Melbourne and National Gallery of Victoria Studio, Melbourne. She was a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary from 2016-2018. Website: http://noriko-nakamura.com

Sista Zai Zanda
Sista Zai Zanda is a storyteller, educator and curator. She has facilitated poetry and storytelling workshops in Australia, Zimbabwe and Denmark and contributed to defining the strategic direction for Melbourne as a UNESCO City of Literature.

In 2011, Zai founded Stillwaters Storytelling Collective, a platform for diverse women’s voices led by Black African women. Stillwaters performed at the Emerging Writers Festival, the Big West Festival, La Mama Theatre and the Light In Winter Festival. Currently, Zai hosts and curates the Pan Afrikan Poets Café, the home of new, cutting edge and classic Afrikan literature. This is a pop up literary event for stories by and about Afrikan and First Nations’ storytellers. Zai established the Pan Afrikan Poets Café in 2015 with the intention to celebrate Africa’s rich literary legacy and diverse storytelling traditions while showing love and respect for First Nations peoples. Since 2015, Zai has spoiled audiences in Melbourne and Sydney with over 100 performances by Afrikan, First Nations and Pasifika artists.

Recently, she co-produced a Pan Afrikan Poets Café event, #BlackGirlMagic at the Arts Centre Melbourne and it sold out in less than 5 days bringing a highly diverse audience to Australia’s largest performing arts venue. Zai is also known for a literary dance party called Sankofa The Love Vibration, a celebration of Motherhood, female ancestry and the Divine Feminine within us all, which debuted at Next Wave Festival as a sold out show. You can catch an afternoon of beats, performance and community conversation at Zai’s monthly Afrikan High Tea party, an interdisciplinary platform for artists which also serves as a practice-based mentorship for new and emerging literary curators who are driven by an ethic of community self-care and collaboration.

Zai’s latest publication, God Is A Black Womban, is a Black Feminist text that is rooted in a long tradition of Afrikan Women’s naked protest. God Is A Black Womban is also available for download as a poem set to Reggae/Dub music at www.thirdculturedub.bandcamp.com/album/god-is-a-black-womban. When she is not performing, mentoring or running workshops, you can find Zai broadcasting on 3CR Community Radio, where she programs a reggae music show called Inity Riddims, focusing on the new and established female voices in the genre.

Sheena Colquhoun
Sheena Colquhoun is an artist, poet and musician who graduated from Fine Arts (Honours) at Monash University in 2014. She was the recipient of the Sunshine Coast New Media Art award in 2015, and was shortlisted for the Darebin Art Prize and the Incinerator, Art for Social Change Prize. She has been published in UK based Journal Tender, and Australian Journals Subbed In and Lieu Journal. She was part of the 2017 emerging poets series Toolkits: Poetry, through Express Media and has exhibited locally and internationally, including shows at Seventh Gallery, West Space and Bus Projects.