Fayen D'Evie

Fayen d’Evie is an artist and writer, born in Malaysia, raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, and now living in the bushlands of unceded Jaara country, Australia. Fayen’s projects are often collaborative, and resist spectatorship by inviting audiences into sensorial readings of artworks. She is also the founder of independent imprint 3-ply, which approaches artist-led publishing as an experimental site for the creation, dispersal, and archiving of texts.

Selected exhibitions include: With Cane in Hand, I Dance a Duet for One, for Two, for Three, for Four…, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney, 2022; Adelaide//International, Endnote: The Ethical Handling of Empty Spaces, SAMSTAG Museum of Art, Adelaide, 2021; The National, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2019; Eavesdropping, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2018; ee//hm, KADIST, San Francisco, 2016; Beyond Exhausted, Physics Room, Christchurch, 2016; […] {…} […], Gertrude Glasshouse, Melbourne 2016; Human Commonalities, V.A.C. and the State Museum of Vadim Sidur, Moscow, 2016; Endless Circulation, TarraWarra Biennial, Healesville, 2016; Habits and customs of _______ are so different from ours…, Kadist, Paris, 2016; Foot-notes, 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial, Yekaterinburg, 2015; Just as Money is the Paper, the Gallery is the Room, Osage Art Foundation, Shanghai, 2015; and Sunny and Hilly, Minerva, Sydney, 2014.

Fayen draws on blindness to propose critical and imaginative methods for navigating uncertainty and the precarious; handling the tangible, intangible, and concealed; documenting ephemeral encounters through hallucinatory recall; inviting extreme myopic readings of artworks and texts; expanding the perceptual space of publication; and animating intersensory translations and conversations.

Since 2016, Fayen and artist and Yindjibarndi woman Katie West have collaborated on Museum Incognita, an intermittent, anti-colonial museum grounded in custodial ethics, which activates gatherings and collective readings of neglected and obscured histories, through sensorial scores, performative encounters, and intertwining threads of story.

From 2017-2019, through a residency with the Artist Initiative of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Fayen collaborated with conservators to initiate sensory encounters with artworks from the collection and temporary exhibitions. She has provided creative provocations and pedagogical guidance to numerous arts institutions committed to more inclusive structures and more ambitious curation of disability-led practice.

In 2019, Fayen was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Naarm/Melbourne.

Fayen was awarded the 2022 State Library of Victoria Marion Orme Page Regional Fellowship. In 2019, she was a finalist in the Incinerator Award for Social Change, and a finalist in the Experimental Print Prize of Castlemaine Art Museum. Fayen was a Creative Victoria Creator 2018. She was awarded the Melbourne Sculpture Prize Rural and Regional Development Award 2017, and an Ian Potter Cultural Trust Award 2017. She was a finalist in the John Fries Award 2017, a resident artist at Gertrude Contemporary 2014-2016, and a finalist in the Macquarie Emerging Artist Award in 2014.

Prior to artmaking, Fayen worked in international peacebuilding education and sustainability, for the United Nations mandated University for Peace, and for the Earth Council, based in Costa Rica. She continues to advise initiatives at the nexus of peacebuilding and arts, especially disability arts and social justice projects.

Fayen is a lecturer in the Masters of Communication Design programme of RMIT University, teaching experimental typography, curating and exhibiting communications design, and studios grounded in archival research and transformative pedagogies.

Fayen is a candidate for a PhD in Curatorial Practice at Monash University. She holds a PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies from the Australian National University, a BFA in Painting from the Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne, and a BSc (First Class Hons) in Physics from the University of Canterbury, Aotearoa/NZ.

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