Based between Naarm/Melbourne and Gimuy/Cairns, Australia, artist Teva Cosic’s research and practice explore the complex tensions of family and cultural history as they intersect with broader notions of identity, migration, and belonging. “The Birdsong is Deafening,” currently ongoing, contemplates the endlessly shifting landscape between memory, loss, and place. “It reflects upon the relationship I have to my hometown of Cairns and the in-between spaces of growing up with a multicultural identity,” she explains. 

Reuniting with familiar spaces and objects from her childhood, Cosic uses her camera to trace over these thoughts on identity. “What began as a solitary meditation slowly extended into a gentle collaboration with the land and those closest to me,” she elaborates. “I found solace in narrating a fragment of my own story with the thought that I might entangle others in its roots. And although you may not feel exactly the same poetic sentiments I have tried to steep these images in—I invite you to recall your own longings and to create dialogue between worlds that are both real and imagined, familiar and unfamiliar, here and there.”

See more from “The Birdsong is Deafening” below!