In season 2 of Like Us, Anna Yeon, Noè Harsel and Zione Walker-Nthenda are each inviting friends to the table for a chat about the important things in life. Then they share the interviews with each-other and regroup to unpack.
In this episode, Noè chats with Iranian Australian artist Kate Robinson.
Kate was the inaugural Feminist in Residence at the Queen Victoria Women's Centre. She's a talented artist and crafter, and serves on the board of Next Wave. Kate co-hosts the podcast with Maria-Birch Morunga. Based in Naarm, Kate's practice includes painting, colourful craft and murals. Her art has been a way of reckoning with and exploring her family history and cultural identity.
Moving away from the law and having art be my main thing has been so freeing. It's been about me realising that I can just focus on joy. I don't have to hold the burden of the world.Kate Robinson
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Transcript
We would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we are broadcasting from, the Boonwurrung people of the Kulin Nation, we pay our respects to their Elders past and present. We would also like to acknowledge all Traditional Owners from all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands you are listening from.
[music]
Like Us is Anna Yeon, Zione Walker-Nthenda and me Noè Harsel: a Japanese Jewish woman, a Korean woman and a Nigerian-Malawian woman chatting about our relationship with Australia and Australia’s relationship with us.
Noè Hey, everyone, how are you?
Zione Very well. How are you Noè and Anna?
Anna Good. Hello, hello.
Zione It's a relatively cold day. I feel like some sunshine. Is your guest going to bring us sunshine?
All [laughs]
Noè You know what? She is going to bring us sunshine. Because Kate Robinson is excellent. All things Excellent. She is an artist actually. And she loves to create all sorts of colourful craft and we love a bit of colourful craft here. She's Iranian Australian. She was the inaugural feminist artist in residence at the Queen Vic site here in Melbourne. Yeah, she's incredible.
She currently serves on the board for Next Wave. She has a great podcast, which I think we all know and if you don’t know, you have to check it out. It's called Being Biracial. It's all about navigating the world.
Zione I've listened to that, yes.
Noè Yeah, navigating the world as a mixed race person. So it talks to me. She is all about making art accessible and working with communities to reignite their creative side. So she does host heaps of workshops and works with local councils and galleries. She's a local artist in residence at Artsbox in Footscray, she has been a judge for the Footscray Young Arts Prize, she's a guest curator at the Amplify program for the Maribyrnong City Council. So I mean, can she actually get any busier?
Zione And can I throw something else? She's a lawyer.
Noè She is a lawyer as well.
Anna Can she get more fabulous question, I think is the question we have to start with.
Noè She’s a lot of fun to talk to, actually.
Zione Looking forward to this conversation.
Anna Let’s get into it.
Noè Let’s have a listen.
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Noè Thank you so much for being here, Kate. You are amazing on all levels. So I'm super excited to be able to get this conversation started. I'm going to ask you pretty straight up, I'm gonna get straight into it, actually. I know that you like me, biracial. So this is a question I get asked all the time, and I'm just going to make the assumption you also get asked, so answer it how you will - what do you say when someone says to you, where are you from?
Kate At this point in my life, I'm pretty comfortable with saying that I'm Iranian Australian, or that I'm Persian. But that definitely hasn't always been the case.
I think for a long time, particularly because I grew up in country Victoria, and particularly because I haven't always necessarily felt so connected to my culture, I probably would have just been like: I'm Australian. And I'm from Kilmore, you know. And just completely diminish one part of myself.
But I think now, you know, I'm in my mid 30s and it's been kind of a gradual process for me to claim both sides of my identity, essentially. And so now I'm pretty straight up. And pretty forward about it.
Noè Can I ask though, because I also used to diminish my ethnicity and my culture, when asked where do you come from, was there something specific that made you go, you know what, I'm proud of who I am and where I come from, and my culture.
Kate I think, like a lot of people, university was a big time for me to kind of reckon with both parts of my identity. I mean, I, like, in a weird twist, I speak Mandarin and studied Chinese, like, of course, just because that was like the option available to me in high school.
And so I went to uni, and I was doing Asian Studies and Law and I guess, as part of exploring my Asian Studies degree, I had a lot of friends and a lot of classmates who are Chinese-Australian, or first Gen, that kind of thing.
And I really distinctly remember having conversations with some of those friends, and then being like, why aren't you studying Farsi? And me being like, I can study whatever I want! Like, why do I have to study Farsi? But then as you know, as time progressed, and the degree progressed, I started to think more and more about that.
And then I did start, you know, like, kind of doing a minor in Farsi, and just like learning how the alphabet works, for example. Because I understand some but not fluently and not, you know, it's a bit mangled in a way because there's multiple dialects and that kind of thing going on in the Farsi that my family speaks.
And so that was like a first pivotal moment. And then I guess, in my 20s, I also went to Iran for the first time and I spent three months with my grandma and my aunt and my uncle and more of my extended family. And that was also a big moment for me, because I think, at that time, I didn't recognize that so many things that I thought were unique to Kate, were actually just like, [applicable to] all the women in my family, and maybe so many women in my broader cultural community as well.
I'm quite loud, and I'm quite confident. I'm quite gossipy, and all of those kinds of things I thought were really unique to me. And that just is not the case. That's just like every Persian woman you've ever met. So that was kind of cool, as well to, I guess, start seeing myself in things that I wouldn't ordinarily have considered to be culture, but just personality. And then realising that like, yeah, just because I'm not fluent in the language doesn't make me any less Persian.
Noè That's amazing. That's so true. When you realise all of a sudden, all these things are a part of a bigger conversation. It's a part of your cultural conversation, not just your individual conversation. I totally get that.
And on that, because you've brought up that you are trained as a lawyer; and I know that you're now this incredible artist with a beautiful creative practice, which is gorgeous. And I just want to… I've read something about you that said that you “worked through your feelings of injustice through craft”. And I find that a really remarkable and beautiful statement. And I'd love you to explain a little bit more about that.
Kate Yeah, so I have been a family violence lawyer for a long time working in community legal centres and government and that kind of thing. And to be honest, it's such a disheartening place.
And I think like many people, I got into the law, from a sense of wanting to make a positive change and wanting to help people. I know, that's such a stereotype. But it absolutely was true. And it absolutely was linked to my mum's experience about displacement and having to leave Iran and the messed up political system there. And, you know, I think, for me, I came in kind of naive, expecting that the legal world was a place that change could happen.
As I worked for years in the family violence space, I just realised that, you know, there's so much about the system that isn't just broken, but actually designed in that way. And it's really hard and challenging to be someone that wants to make a fast [difference] and wants to, work with and for their clients and [instead] just to feel like you're beating your head up against a wall.
So it was really for me during my time at one of the legal services I worked at - probably when I was at my most vicarious trauma/worst mental health state to be honest - that I met one of the other women who worked there. She was very creative and she would kind of like ran these crafternoon sessions, sometimes as a way of taking a moment; taking a breath to do something different.
And I think spending time with her was really important for me because it made me realise that art and craft is not something that I just had to think that only came from art school, and was something that, you know, you can love and have as a passion, and you can be creative, and you can do at home. And so that was really freeing for me, I guess.
While like my parents never put pressure on me to study law, or to be a lawyer or any of that kind of stuff, I definitely had put that internal pressure on myself, and definitely broader family pressure had pushed me in that direction.
Still now I talk to my aunts and my, one of my aunts is like, when are you doing your PhD, and I'm like, in what? You know, I'll talk to a different aunt and she'd be like, I just think that you're very well suited for, like, politics: have you thought like, you could be like, female prime minister. You don't know anything about the way my life operates and what I'm interested in, but I love that you say that for me.
I see it coming from a really beautiful place because it comes from a place where I have opportunities that people in my family have never had. So that's really sweet. But I think for me, reclaiming craft and really enjoying craft and now moving away from the law and having art be my main thing has been so freeing.
It's kind of been about me, realising that, like, I can also just focus on joy. And I don't have to, I don't have to hold the burden of the world to be honest. And I can just make sparkly paintings and like, play with glitter. And like, that is enough, too.
Noè That's so beautiful. I love that I just love the fact that you've also self-described your art as loud and colourful. And I mean, I think that's a really powerful way of talking about it. I think there's a really powerful cultural way of talking about that. And I wonder if you could sort of describe your art. I mean, tell me why you describe it that way? And how would you describe your art?
Kate Yeah, so I do a lot of watercolour work and a lot of murals. The reason that I would describe it, you know, as loud and colourful is because I'm basically embracing my “ethnic- auntie energy”.
I think for a long time, because I'm not a formally trained artist - and because I haven't been to art school and done all the things - I had this kind of conception of art as having to be one particular way. And so, say I was doing a portrait and I included one pattern in an outfit that the person was wearing, then I'd be like: alright, cool, I've done one pattern, I shouldn't add another, or, you know, I shouldn't add those sparkly stickers on the top.
More recently, I've really been embracing the loudness and the pattern and the chaos, essentially, that comes from just putting all the things you want to put on a page, and not caring about what anyone else might think. And just really thinking about what I like, what I'm attracted to. And that's been wonderful.
And I recently have been working on a series called zendegi, which means life in Farsi. But it's a bit more complicated than that, because the start of the word in Persian is ‘zen’ which is the word for woman. And so for me that the reason that I called it that was because I was thinking about, like, the kind of centrality to women, of women to life. And also obviously, those words women love freedom are part of, you know, the political movement and revolution that's happening in Iran at the moment.
So the project that I've been working on has been a series of portraits of one of my aunts. And it kind of came about because last year, I went to visit my family for the first time since COVID, in LA, and spent a long time with my aunts. And I think for them, you know, that they're in their 70s, or 60s and COVID was really difficult. And so they've just been reflecting a lot on their lives and all that they've given up to leave Iran and all that they've gained, but the complexity that comes with that.
So one of my aunts, Mary was showing me all these photos of her as, like, a young person in pre Islamic Republic regime Iran, and I was just taking photos of those photos just to show my mum essentially. Then I was travelling for a couple of months after that and then I guess I was looking for inspiration for what I was going to paint just while I was travelling, and then I was so drawn to the photos because there's so, like, extra.
It's very Elizabeth Taylor, like all of the patterns, all of the colours, all of the sparkles. And so then I guess when I was creating these portraits, I was like, it's not just about me being attracted to patterns and colour and all of this kind of stuff. But it's, it's just being a representative, an accurate representation of who my aunty is, and I have to embrace that. So creating that series of portraits has been so incredible for me as a way to, I guess, feel closer to my family, but also really just embrace my aesthetic completely and kind of forget about the bullshit in a way.
Noè Yeah. And also, like you were saying earlier, that whole sort of leaning into your culture and your heritage and your identity in that sort of holistic way. I mean, I'm curious, was all of that and finding that way, in your creative practice, with your identity, just a fluid process for you? Or was there ever a pushback? I mean, have your parents embraced that part of your story?
Kate I think to be honest for a long time, I felt kind of uncomfortable embracing that side of myself fully. And I think part of that comes from the fact that I was worried about what other Iranians or Persians would think. Because like, who am I to take up that space, because, you know, I'm harsh. And I've spent time with my family and spent time in Iran, but I've never lived there. I didn't grow up there. I'm not fluent in the language. So for me, taking up that space felt a bit uncomfortable.
But it's really been cool now that I have to feel kind of… to feel like I've been seen in a way. And part of what's helped that, to be honest, has been, like, creating, Being Biracial, the podcast that we make about being mixed and having all these conversations with other mixed race people. And realising that there isn't one way to be mixed race, and there isn't a solution, like, you know, there is no answer. I think we started the project thinking there would be and there isn't. Also, to be honest, this political movement that's happening in Iran at the moment has been such a source of like, rich, incredible art by Persian women from across the diaspora.
I don't see any of those paintings, posts, any of that activism on social media and think like, oh, should she really be saying something about this. Like, I just feel such an incredible sense of solidarity. And so that's been really impactful for me, I guess, as well to be able to embrace talking about the fact that I'm going to run in Australia as an artist and being okay with that.
Noè Amazing. That's beautiful. Thank you, Kate. I just don't think there's anything else we can add to that. That is perfect. I think that's beautiful.
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Noè Wow, so I hope you all enjoyed listening to Kate, who I think is just a delight.
Zione She’s fascinating.
Noè Yeah. Isn't she? She's actually fascinating. And she's so fun. She just loves what she's doing. And she's so positive about everything.
Zione I noticed that. She’s so easy to talk to.
Noè Very easy. And so kind and so generous with what she shares. And I mean, you would have now…as you've heard, I bring in all the people I talk to with the question that is the one that I always get asked, which is like, where are you from?
All [laughs]
Noè And like you either love it, or you hate it. But I mean, they've all been super generous in answering that question for me, because I'm also really curious on how other people answer it when they're confronted with it. Or even whether they are confronted with it. But what I’ve found interesting is that they have all been confronted with it so far.
And you know, Kate's answer, I found it really interesting, because she wasn't always able, or she didn't always feel comfortable to claim her identity. And that's something I can really relate to, as you well know, because we spoke about it last season on the podcast.
Zione and Anna Yes.
Noè So you know, and I thought what she commented really specifically on was how for biracial people, it can be really complicated to claim identity.
Zione It sounded as if it was fraught for her at the beginning, right? Because there's a perception about where you are from and if it doesn't match that, then all of a sudden, there's an explanation that people think they're owed, when in reality, you think I don't owe you any explanation for my existence, or my appearance or my anything, quite frankly.
But I enjoyed the interview process because, yes it was fraught at the beginning, but she then shared how she came to terms with owning it and taking up space and feeling like well, I own that space. This is my unique space as Kate Robinson, right? With all of the complexities and the simplicities as well. Really love that. I have many, many things that I want to ask but yeah, Anna you go.
Noè What did you think, Anna?
Anna I was gonna start with… Kilmore.
All [laugh]
Anna And when she said that it just put, so… like there was a sensory like, because I've been to Kilmore, you know, because I've lived in Victoria for like 20 years. I could see, smell and hear the kind of context where she would have had to go through that sort of journey of the fraught, you know, identity and just put so much palpable context into her experience.
And it was also a really quite a profound reminder for me as well, that when I look in the mirror, you know, I look Korean and I have the identity of being Korean-Australian. And it's in some ways, straightforward and one dimensional. Whereas there are so many Australians like Kate, where there are layers of ethnic and other identities that don't show up on the face. And other Australians, other people might have an expectation of how, what she says her identity is, should come with a certain kind of appearance that they can see.
And the everyday experience, especially as a young person, growing up in a regional community, Australia, like that whole experience, like Kate just put it so beautifully without any rancour or anything, it was very easy, flowing conversation. But it must have been quite a test of character to live through that and come out the other side.
Zione So when she shared about that context of that journey for herself, and when she travelled to Persia - I think, as an adult in the 20s - and she got to see that a lot of things that she thought were uniquely Kate, uniquely her were characteristics that were across the entire Persian community, across her family, and so on and so forth.
And therefore, she wasn't odd, or she wasn't as unique as she thought. I thought that was really, really… well, I know…
Anna …not that special!
Zione But it’s quite comforting…
All Yeah.
Anna And it’s belonging…
Zione …that sense of belonging and then you feel more comfortable claiming your cultural identity because you can now see it, right? It's not in your face, but it's in your expression, it's in the way you talk, it's in the things that you're attracted to, it's in the way you express your creativity, all of that, right? So [it] gave her the justification to say: this is my stamp, I own this, this is my sense of belonging, no matter what you say, or what you see, I can see it for myself. I thought that was really powerful.
Noè And I think that's really important. And really, I think that's something that, you know, maybe it's I don't know, if it's some people who are from mixed races or more, it's more prevalent. But for me, for example, I can definitely relate to … not because you're sort of skating between multi-cultures, it's sometimes hard to position yourself anywhere.
Zione Yes.
Noè …of yourself in mainstream culture anywhere. It's almost like gratitude, right? So I remember, I think we spoke about this in our first season. You know, not having seen myself in a Jewish cultural context. Clearly, you know, not not having seen myself in an Asian or Japanese cultural context. Clearly, when I see evidence of that, I feel super happy, almost joyfully elated! Every so often. And when Anna says,”oh, that's an Asian thing. You're behaving so Asian”, I feel so happy. Because I'm like, I've found friends. I've found family.
All [laughs]
Anna So when Kate says about how taking up space was uncomfortable at first… Like, to be honest, it made me think like, “Have I ever acted in that way? Were those with Asian background or Korean background who are mixed race [felt uncomfortable]?” Gosh, like … I can't say… to confess, I can't say with confidence that I've never been part of that element that may have made a mixed race person feel like it's a bit harder for them to take up space.
Because Koreans who look like me take up space in the Korean diaspora. So yeah, it made me kind of…a little bit… like, check myself, you know. And I think I may have really appreciated the chance to check myself because, you know, if I'm seeking that belonging in diversity, I have to do that with others that carry…that bring different colours of, different dynamics of diversity. And I need to learn that.
Zione To get belonging you also have to create belonging, right? For other people to create this space for people to belong. I really enjoyed her piece around, you know, embracing “ethnic aunty energy”.
All [laugh]
Zione And her art piece, the series of portraits she was talking about. And I don't know if I'm saying this, right, zeding-gir, or something. I really, really, that really resonated very strongly with me also the meaning: the sort of woman like freedom and the focus on life and women as the, the carriers of creativity and so on. Really, really enjoyed that for her.
It gave her the opportunity to embrace her sort of cultural aesthetic, right? More, and then more and more and more, there is never too much design, there never too much... To add some more, there's no end to it, right?
Anna More is more!
Zione Keep topping it up, right? I just thought that that was really amazing. And so I'm really curious about her arts practice, to actually see what that more more more looks like…
Anna me too…
Zione Because I also come from a cultural context, like Nigeria is a very more more more, more, more, more colour, more this, more that. So I'm curious to kind of see how the two things relate.
Noè Yeah! That’s interesting.
Zione Is their more more than our more? Is our more more than theirs? What's more?
Noè I love that. It’s also interesting that the whole how she was able to use that as a way of claiming legitimacy as well.
Zione Yeah!
Noè Because she points out, does she have the right? No language and she's bi-racial, she wasn’t born there or lived there - is she going to be enough to be able to make that art? And I love that in the end, she was able to go and use, as you say, the “ethnic aunty energy” to be able to say: you know what? I'm doing it. I'm claiming it.
Again, it's my story my way. And I'm going to tell it. And I think that that is again, it's courage.
Zione Yes!
Noè And I think that a lot of the stories we're hearing from people are about courage. And about claiming my story, my way. And again, that's exactly what she's doing. And it's again, I think, what you're talking about, what you're talking about, as well Anna; and, definitely what I'm talking about is how do we claim courage? How do we claim our stories? How do we legitimise ourselves in the narratives that we're living it to make it so that it's and we are big enough? In this space, we claim the space that we need, and anyone else around us, who was trying to de-legitimise us is actually irrelevant.
Zione Yeah. Totally.
Anna And Kate’s story for me, the importance of art as a vehicle, that really stood out. And how… I just feel, you know, often society kind of devalues artistic practices. And I think, you know, Kate's story was just another really significant example of actually…
Noè Even in her culture, culturally, for us, I mean, not her culture, our culture, all cultures, there is, but also in migrant stories…
Zione particularly…
Noè Right? That whole sort of how do you prove the worth of an artistic or creative practice, in the face of all the struggles that our families have done to bring us here?
Zione And now what do you choose?
Noè Oh, my gosh, she was a…
Zione and Noè lawyer!!
All [laugh]
Zione And her aunties are asking her, you should be doing a PhD! You should be Prime Minister, you know, political pathways, et cetera, that are being crafted and, oh you’ve dropped to do, sorry, say it again?
Noè Was it glitter?
Zione Exactly! Right, so that's the courage too. In the face of that to say? No, thank you. I have that. And I think when she was even talking about her law career, she did realise that there was a little bit of a cultural impetus in becoming a lawyer. But for her, it was more around social justice, and that fight, and she became a family violence lawyer, and so on and so forth. But it wasn't satisfactory, because she had these other things to contribute in other ways of speaking, and bringing her own identity, which it's kind of hard doing that within a legal practice versus an arts practice. So she's bringing her full life and her full self to her expression. I loved that.
Noè Her creative practice also then became part of that social justice conversation, which I think is also again, tying it all up again, is about courage. Yeah, I'm super happy you enjoyed it.
Zione Thank you so much for introducing us to Kate in that very, very intimate way. Love it.
Anna Absolutely.
Noè Thanks, guys.
Thanks for listening to Like Us and SBS Audio Podcast. You can find more episodes at sbs .com .au /likeus and follow us in the SBS Audio app or wherever you get your podcast. Your hosts are me, Noè Harsel, Anna Yeon, Zione Walker-Nthenda. We are produced and engineered by Michael Burrows at Tomato Studios with support from the podcast team at SBS Audio.
