Aafia Ali Shah: artist talk
5 - 6pm, Thursday 3 April
Join Marian Tubbs, Senior Lecturer in Art and Design at Southern Cross University, for a discussion with artist Aafia Ali Shah regarding her exhibition To love the empty cup in Gallery 5.
The artist will reflect on her journey studying visual arts at SCU, and on the conceptual themes of her practice such as relationship with place and placelessness, time, and the meta-physical experiences of the inner self in relation to the external world.
Aafia Ali Shah
Aafia is an emerging artist who lives and works between Australia and Pakistan. She completed her Bachelor of Art and Design at Southern Cross University, Lismore, in 2023.
Through the mixed practices of expressive painting and meditative making of books and fibre artefacts, she seeks to encounter and reflect on insights relating to Islamic spirituality.
Aafia uses symbolism, material engagement, and poetic translation and re-translation to engage with the human habit of pattern-seeking and the experiencing of feelings complex beyond language, with intuition playing a crucial role as her compass to triangulate a path to states of being which are fleeting and highly subtle. She is interested in creating spaces which embody these states of being and internal narratives that are inexpressible, such that they put one in the position of a witness to the Unknown, to reach into it and find ‘Truth’.
Marian Tubbs
Marian Tubbs is an artist working on Bundjalung/Lismore and Gubbi Gubbi/Sunshine Coast land. Her assemblage-focused practice explores vision technologies, materiality, and ecologies. She conflates material juxtapositions between the analogue and the digital, physical and virtual, natural and artificial to create new experiences. Tubbs’ work incorporates a variety of media, including video, online projects, painting, sculpture and installation. She uses original recordings, archival images, and foraged items to create exhibitions that have been described as ‘pseudo-documentaries’.
Upcoming and recent exhibitions include shields and the Metaverse cafe, ElevatorARI, Lismore, STATION Melbourne (2025); Coral Futures, NorthSite Cairns (2026); Constructed Photography, Museum of Photography, Melbourne (2024); Backwash, Australian National University Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra (2023); and Know my Name: Australian Female Artists 1900 to Now, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2022).
Marian holds a PhD from UNSW and is Course Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in Art & Design at Southern Cross University.
