"Alina, Olena, Lana and Jana is a single-channel digital video work and installation. It is a re-imagining of four Eastern European characters that I played as an actress for various UK television and stage productions.
These characters were difficult for me to let go of. I began to dream around them and questioned what their liberation might look like. How could they become aspirational? Were they doomed? Using the tools of fantasy and play, I began to create new versions of these protagonists with SFX makeup artist and co-producer Erika Beiza, and I developed scenarios for their liberations with videographer and co-producer Klari Agar.
Together we shot the footage which enabled me to critique the medium of TV/film by utilising its own methods of production against itself. With regards to the performances, as I knew these characters inside-out having played them before, I wanted to unshackle them, so I performed them unscripted. I carried this ethos of playfulness into the editing room in order to take full ownership over their new narratives. I also wanted to address the viewer directly and gently implicate their role in the demand for these stories.”
- Tanya Cubric
Tanya Cubric (b.1991, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal) is a multidisciplinary artist of Balkan heritage working across performance, video and installation. She was raised between the UK and Serbia and graduated from RMIT in 2024, with a Master of Fine Art.
Drawing on her background in theatre and film, she uses satirical characters, improvised performances, ready-made materials, video, and sound to explore themes of power and otherness. Fantasy and play are used as forms of resistance to renarrativise oppressive societal stereotypes.
Recent achievements: Arts Council UK funding (2020-2021); Tropical Lab Artist Residency in Singapore (2023); ACMI X + RMIT Graduate Artist in Residence (2025-2026); forthcoming solo show at First Draft Gallery in Eora/Sydney 2025.
Image: Tanya Cubric, Alina, Olena, Lana and Jana, (still) 2024. Image courtesy of the artist. Video still by Klari Agar.
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'Surging through exits when the bell goes' is a design-led research project that examines how the aesthetics of high school environments and digital platforms shape the hidden curriculum of contemporary education. It traces how physical architectures of control have evolved into the visual and behavioural architectures of digital systems, focusing on behaviour monitoring systems.
Formed through slow, meditative processes of hand-stitching, wrapping and dyeing, 'Inheritance' weaves together Chowdhury’s lived experiences as a first-generation Bangladeshi-Australian artist.
'Steel Karkade' showcases the multifaceted experiences of Black women in the diaspora, as well as the artist’s South Sudanese heritage. For her, the livelihoods and narratives of her ancestors and the Black women who came before her are significantly underrepresented and unwritten; her practice endeavours to bring light and permanence to their stories and cultural history.
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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