Weaving
I have been weaving since I was a child and only recently started again after learning some traditional weaving stitches from the South East of this continent (Kulin and Yorta Yorta). The practice of harvesting and making on Kulin Country has challenged me to consider the materials, stories and attitudes I embody as a settler here, carrying responsibilities for weaving practices from other lands.
I often say that weaving is a byproduct of healing and cultural repair. I am not skilled at weaving, I am skilled at creating the conditions for weaving to begin.
Creative Practice
BIO - Leah Manaema Avene
Leah Manaema Avene (she/they) is a Tuvaluan-Irish community-psychotherapist, artist, educator, and relational designer, raised on unceded Kulin Country (known as Melbourne, Australia). Leah's work is committed to decompressing the impacts of settler colonial oppression as it manifests in bodies, communities, and social systems, through relational practices, narrative technologies, and cultural restoration. Leah describes their art work as a byproduct of healing and resistance processes - music and song designed to flush grief, narratives designed to pull all that is faraway closer, relational facilitation designed to sculpt the invisible space between bodies; weaving practices designed to collect diverse stories into robust cultural material.Sound
I have been singing, composing and performing since I was a child, though the through line of music and song reach back through both my Tuvaluan and Irish lines. When I was young I wanted to write love songs and get played on the radio. Now I’m older, I think my favourite songs to write are lullabies for children, love songs for Country and Fenua and jingles to sing throughout the day to help life unfold gently. I am collecting bird songs at the moment and trying to learn how to sing to waterways.