Fayen D’Evie

Dr Fayen d'Evie is a lecturer in the Masters of Communication Design programme of RMIT University, teaching experimental typography, curating and exhibiting communications design, and studios grounded in archival research and transformative pedagogies.

Fayen d'Evie is an artist, writer, and publisher, born in Malaysia, raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, and now living in the bushlands of unceded Jaara country, Australia. Her creative projects are often collaborative, and resist spectatorship by inviting audiences into sensorial readings of artworks.

She is the founder of 3-ply, an independent imprint which approaches artist-led publishing as an experimental, critical, and poetic site for the creation, dispersal, and archiving of texts. With artist and Yindjibarndi woman Katie West, Fayen co-founded the Museum Incognita, a decolonised museum structure grounded in custodial ethics, that activates collective readings of neglected and obscured histories, through sensorial scores, performative encounters, and intertwining threads of story.

From 2017-2019, Fayen collaborated with the Artist Initiative of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) to explore sensory encounters with artworks from the collection and temporary exhibitions. She has provided creative provocations and pedagogical guidance to numerous arts institutions committed to more inclusive structures and more ambitious curation of disability-led practice.

Prior to artmaking, Fayen worked in international peacebuilding education and sustainability, for the United Nations mandated University for Peace, and for the Earth Council. She continues to advise initiatives at the nexus of peacebuilding and arts, especially disability arts and social justice projects.

Since 2019, Fayen has been on the Board of Directors of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA). Fayen is a core member of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists (SoVISA).

Since 2016, Fayen has researched the radical potential for blindness to introduce critical positions and methods for navigating intersensory conversations, handling the tangible and intangible, uncertainty, the precarious, hallucination, and the concealed.

This has evolved into a curatorial investigation into exhibition making as a dustcloud of sensorial improvisations, translations, and conversations. This research incorporates explorations of embodied typography, tactile reading, gestural publishing, sensory and movement scores, audiodescription as a creative medium, among other strands.

Within typography, Fayen is also interested in decolonising protocols, gatekeeping, and design outcomes. They experiment with pedagogical models and resources that may animate and empower individuals and communities to develop personal and collective typefaces.

Blindness, Sensorial, Access, Welcome, Experimental Typography, Gesture, Sound, Tactility

• Experimental typography