People’s stories inspire my art. Aisya Zaharin is a PhD researcher on ‘Navigating Asian values and media responsibility’ at the University of Queensland. She works across the fields of political science, history and decolonisation to LGBTQI+ & Islam. She's also a Malaysian trans Muslim woman and Australian citizen with fascinating stories to tell with passion, grit, humour and intelligence. We recorded this outside so be prepared for some birds.

An amazing night with a repeat walking performance of The Lion Never Sleeps by Noamie Huttner-Koros at The Blue Roome theatre (well, we started walking from there) for which I was interviewed in 2019 for her 2019/20 season. It tells stories of Perth's LGBTIQ community during the AIDs crisis in the early to mid 1980s, part of the largely undocumented and overlooked history of Western Australia that wasn't considered 'acceptable' history for decades.

Bildungsroman is a self-portrait which continues my exploration of the universal spiritual and philosophical canon to ‘Know Thyself’. I have followed a multi-faith journey held together by the creation of a personal God that expresses my own culture. We talk in private, so painting us speaking in metaphors maintain that sacredness…

I was invited to be a part of an inspiring interview experience for a new street-theatre oral history called The Lion Never Sleeps. Thanks to Noemie the director and creator who made this incredible audio journey that takes the audience on a live walk through the inner-city streets of Northbridge in Perth, Western Australia. They have re-created the stories of the people who were there (like me), and how we survived the AIDS Crisis in the 1980s. 

A wonderful new anthology I'm proud to be part of and, honestly, it's so readable and a breath of fresh air in terms of understanding the hidden cultural diversity in LGBT communities

Queer theory isn't for everyone I know, but if you know me, you know that I have different levels to my work. Thank you to The Qouch for inviting me to write about my series of paintings - The Assassination of Judy Garland