Adelaide Festival Centre. 24 Oct 2026
The planned discontinuation of Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival beyond 2026 appears highly regrettable. Over the twenty years of its presentation, OzAsia has introduced audiences to the art and culture of many Asian countries, thereby enriching Australian culture and affirming the importance of cultural identity and history.
Most importantly, it has made Australians of Asian descent feel welcome and part of the Australian community. The diverse cultural, linguistic and religious traditions represented in Australia are to be honoured and celebrated.
Despite the misgivings of some politicians, Australia has long been a multicultural society. According to the 2021 Australian Census, 17.4% of Australia's population has some Asian ancestry. Many of the visual artists as well as the writers and musicians featured in this year’s festival are Australians with Asian ancestry, and their work exemplifies the widely evident infusion of various Asian cultural traditions into Australian culture.
Jake Yang, Fire Horse (detail), photo Rosina Possingham
Jake Yang’s Fire Horse, displayed at Artspace in the Festival Centre, comprises a series of ceramic tiles hand-painted to represent a horse. Yang is a third-generation Chinese-Australian who is tracing his Chinese cultural origins, and in the Chinese zodiac, 2026 is the year of the Fire Horse.
The tiles have been created in collaboration with artists from Minda’s MyPath Visual Arts and Pottery programs, thus enabling participation by people with an intellectual disability.
Yang is also conducting workshops in which audience members can learn traditional Chinese painting techniques and apply them to the tiles which will be displayed as part of the exhibition. His approach to inclusiveness and the sensitisation of the audience to Asian cultural traditions epitomises the spirit and intent of OzAsia.
Damien Shen, Entombed in Joy Tryptich
Photo supplied, Adelaide Festival Centre
Damien Shen’s Entombed of Joy, on display in the Historic Phone Booths at the Adelaide Railway Station, comprises traditional shields decorated with popular culture imagery he absorbed in his youth rather than traditional Ngarrindjeri or Kaurna symbols, and his work shows how popular culture shapes personal and community identity, values and beliefs. The term ‘entombed’ in the exhibition title suggests the potential mortality of one’s cultural heritage while the shields suggest the defence of that heritage.
Naina Sen, Shundori, composite photo still,
Photo supplied, Adelaide Festival Centre
Indian-born, Darwin-based Naina Sen’s magnificent compilation Shundori comprises several videos shown as floor-to-ceiling projections that fill the walls of The Galleries of the Festival Centre to create an immersive experience for the viewer.
Shundori is a Bengali word for feminine beauty and, accompanied by spoken word, song and ambient sound, these exquisitely beautiful, slow-motion videos depict womxn performance artists (Sen uses the feminist term ‘womxn’) variously illustrating elements of Indian mythology, identity and strategies for resistance.
One video shows a womxn whose body bears text encouraging womxn’s education and empowerment, including a quote by Indian educator, teacher and social reformer Savitribai Phule (1831 – 1897) which reads: ‘Sit idle no more, go get education, learn and break the chains of caste.’
In another video, a painted figure bears the text “The Queer Muslim” and the names of historical figures reputed to be queer, including poet Mihri Hatun (1456/1460 – c.1506), known as the “Sappho of the Ottomans". Shundori thus raises the issue of queer repression as well as the need for womxn’s liberation and empowerment.
Showing on the AFC’s screens facing King William Road is Indian-born, San Francisco-based dancer, composer and media artist Surabhi Saraf’s mesmerising video Apni’s Alaap in which her persona, Apni, performs a Hindustani-inspired ritual dance.
On her webpage, Saraf states, ‘To call someone "apni" is to say she is one of us or that she is her own. This duality embodies the essence of belonging, blurring the boundaries between self and other; an exploration at the heart of kinmaking.’
Malaysian-born Adelaide artist Sharifah Sorayya’s exhibition The Unspoken: Intimate portraits & silent dialogues, showing at The Mill, comprises a series of photogravure prints, many of which have been retouched or manipulated, exploring her cultural heritage and her family and personal history. As well as constituting her memoir, these monochrome images can elicit deep feelings of nostalgia in the viewer.
The emphasis throughout the festival is on how cultural identity is formed from a constellation of influences and how the artwork shown acts as a vehicle for personal affirmation. The use of visual art or any artform to characterise an alternative cultural identity constitutes a form of resistance to the dominant culture, which remains predominantly British or western. Through their art-making, people of mixed cultural origins resist individual exclusion, cultural erasure and the homogenisation that amounts to recolonisation.
OzAsia has a crucial role in supporting the ‘third space’ invoked by theorists such a Homi K. Bhabha and Ien Ang where communities mingle creatively as equals, and it demonstrates how the arts can validate the experience of Asian Australians. These artists, to whom many Asian Australians might relate, provide positive role models for individual self-expression and self-affirmation. OzAsia’s writers’ program is especially important in providing a forum for illuminating dialogue.
In place of the OzAsia Festival, the Festival Centre has indicated that, while the Lucky Dumpling Market will continue as an annual event, it will program Asian elements throughout the year. The question is whether such programming will bring audiences, writers, musicians, artists and others together in the focussed, immersive and catalysing manner which has been the enduring achievement of OzAsia, or whether the loss of the festival will see further cultural homogenisation and exclusion.
OzAsia is not merely entertainment; it is a space for personal and community engagement, activation and growth.
Chris Reid
When: 9 Oct to 1 Nov (some exhibitions run for longer seasons)
Where: Adelaide Festival Centre, Historic Phone Booths, and The Mill
More info: ozasia.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
Sharifa Sorrayya, Enlightenment
Photo supplied, Adelaide Festival Centre
