Artists

Malena Szlam is an artist and filmmaker from Chile, based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal.

Her work explores relationships between humans and the natural world, with a focus on perception, ecology, and analogue film. Working across film, installation, and photography, she engages sensory experience and material processes to examine how environments are perceived and understood.

Szlam’s films have screened internationally at festivals and museums, including the Toronto International Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and MoMA. Her award-winning film ALTIPLANO (2018) received the Best Experimental Short Film award at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at Fulcrum Arts, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark.

In 2025, Szlam was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award and was a finalist for the Louis-Comtois Award (AGAC). Her work is held in MoMA’s permanent collection.

In Residence at Bundanon

Using 16mm film and sound recording, I will work through site-based fieldwork and walking across Bundanon and the wider Shoalhaven River valley to gather visual and sonic material attentive to seasonal plant life, algae, insects, and birdlife, supporting the development of a new moving-image project. Through observation and extended time, I will engage with wetlands, riverbanks, and forested environments while learning about the relationship between geography and culture. Informed by walkscape, movement becomes a form of sensing rhythm, texture, and spatial relationships. This fieldwork informs ongoing reflection and development, translating lived encounters with place into a sensory, earth-responsive work.