Floating Worlds: Cultural Encounters and Collisions

Research Background: D'Costa's Shimmering Spaces exhibition challenges ideas about belonging, a concept that has largely been overlooked in cultural studies literature. His creative practice contains parallels with the works of William Yang and Jimmie Durham, artists who also focus on the relationship between personal and national narratives. Yang's photographs (Stills Gallery, Sydney) draw on his past history to speak of the transient nature of belonging. Durham (Spovieri Gallery, London) produces reflective pieces that inspire questions about the very nature and politics of who belongs and what it means to contest the terms of belonging. Research Contribution: D'Costa's exhibition explored the following two research questions: What are the ties that tie us to particular places? What does it mean to be caught between two worlds? These questions have been significant in cultural studies, particular among postcolonial scholars (Hall, Bhabha, Spivak). However, D'Costa's work offers a new contribution to the body of cultural analysis around these questions through its creative and visual representation of these questions. This approach is significant and innovative because the work acts as a primary resource, a cultural artefact, of first-person narratives that can become formative in describing new generations of migrants in Australia. Research Significance: D'Costa's work was selected for inclusion in the prestigious 2013 Castlemaine State Festival Visual Arts Biennial, Periscope. This consisted of 13 local and national artists. Guntarik's catalogue essay states: 'The coherence of the artist's vision commanding the space around us physically, geographically, conceptually, transports us directly into the world of his making. We are invited to explore what is going on here artistically, what has gone on here where the artists has placed himself, and where he will take us next.' The themes from the work will be included in a paper for the Intellect journal Crossings.