Artists

Özlem Güler is an emerging artist born in Sydney to Turkish-ZaZa Kurdish migrant parents. Her practice spans painting, drawing, and photography.

Formerly a social worker and arts therapist, she now participates in community-engaged practice and works from her home studio. Her figurative work reflects her foundational training in traditional fine arts, while her photography and mixed media practice are grounded in feminist perspectives on cultural identity as a first-generation Australian.

Tara Peñales is an emerging ceramicist and writer. She is First Nations Anishinaabe and a FILx person from Canada. In 2023-2024 she spent her time welding and weaving sculptures as an art assistant. After a surgery and living with ongoing chronic pain, she returned to her practice in ceramics using hand-building or wheel-throwing techniques. Tara connects to her work through storytelling and material experimentation, and is often moved to use written words to create a ceramic sculpture or story.

In Residence at Bundanon

The project will focus on cultural memory, migrant heritage in Euro-centric realities and grounding the self in story to connect to home. A key element of the residency will be discursive collaboration centred around Güler and Peñales’ lived experiences of being ‘othered’ in cultural identity and displacement. Through interdisciplinary experimentation and merging their practices, they will unearth commonalities between them while honouring their cultural uniqueness by identifying stories of joy, humour, comfort, and grief.