STRENGTHENING SOLIDARITIES

Última Huella by Claudio Pérez, exhibited at Nandi Keshar Bagaincha, Naxal, during PhotoKTM 2026, Kathmandu’s biennial photography festival themed Global South Solidarities. Photo: Phoebe Chen/ PhotoKTM

About us:

Strengthening Solidarities and Decolonising Collaboration explores how artist-led, community-centred practices can shape more ethical and equitable ways of doing intercultural exchange.

Cultural exchange across the region has often been shaped by governments, funding bodies and institutions, with Indigenous and local community-based knowledge treated as secondary. Yet Indigenous artists, knowledge holders and communities, alongside artist collectives, socially engaged artists, and grassroots cultural organisations, have long-standing practices of exchange, reciprocity and care. These offer powerful models for how collaboration can and should happen, for curators, policymakers and audiences alike in our own communities and when invited to collaborate with others.

This research starts from practice in community. Working alongside First Peoples, global Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists, with case studies in Australia, Indonesia and Nepal, we centre local knowledges, creativity, and the relationships that make intercultural collaboration meaningful, generative,and lasting.

Our guiding question: How can community-centred art help decolonise intercultural exchange and collaboration and build deeper cultural relations in the Indo-Pacific?

What we aim to do:

Document and theorise community-centred methods through the voices of practitioners in Australia, Indonesia and Nepal
Strengthen regional artistic networks through decolonising approaches to collaboration
Co-create new ethical frameworks that can inform cultural policy, programs, creative practice and theory
Understand how cultural diplomacy policy relates to community-centred arts practice and exchange

A partnership between RMIT University School of Art and Yoonggama First Peoples (Australia), Monash University (Australia), KUNCI Study Forum and Collective and Bakudapan Food Study Group (Indonesia), photo.circle (Nepal), FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany).

This research is funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (ARC) DP260100732.