We Are All Affected

An innovative new project titled We Are All Affected is set to explore anxiety within and around Australian Muslim communities, as part of The Big Anxiety Festival restaging the practice of seven contemporary Australian Muslim artists, curators, and writers, from the group known as Eleven.

In July 2017 We Are all Affected began its life at the annual Multicultural Eid Festival located in the Western Sydney suburb of Fairfield, where the seven Australian Muslim artists presented their work to the wider community for the first time. Invited by The Big Anxiety festival to develop a program that extended community engagement, curators Khaled Sabsabi and Nur Shkembi proposed that exhibiting in a festival beyond the art world would present a unique test of art’s capacity to build a connection.

The final evolution of the project, in gallery spaces in the Peacock Gallery and Auburn Arts Studio and Fairfield Gallery and Museum, reveals how the artists’ works were changed by Multicultural Eid Festival experience and extended to wider community engagement through a series of workshops.

Amidst photography, video installation, sculpture, ceramics and interactive media, a series of workshops will be staged, challenging and promoting reflection on the often negatively framed public conversations about Australian Muslims.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Abdul Abdullah (UNSW Art & Design), Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Khaled Sabsabi (UNSW Art & Design), Rusaila Bazlamit, Cigdem Aydemir (UNSW Art & Design), Eugenia Flynn, Abdullah MI Syed (UNSW Art & Design) and Idil Abdullahi. We Are All Affected is co-curated by Khaled Sabsabi and Nur Shkembi.