About Aisya Zaharin

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. Someone asked me if Aisya is an old friend I’m interviewing and I told them it’s the first time we have met offline, but that we just felt like we had known each other for years, such was our empathy, even when I was asking complex questions, learning all the time, and having a lot of fun.

She has helped me to understand how even William Blake was questioning binary thinking back in the 18th century. One of his quotes especially applies to this conversation. It is from a poem which I am currently working with as the basis for my visual essay for the journal VALA in London: “Eternity is in love with the productions of time” (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790)