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, publisher, and academic, born in Malaysia, raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, and now living and working on unceded Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung lands, in Naarm-Melbourne, Australia. Fayen’s projects are often collaborative, and resist spectatorship by inviting audiences into sensorial readings of artworks and texts. A lifetime of fluctuating vision has spurred creative research into blindness as a critical and imaginative position. Her artworks and exhibitions have introduced tactile, gestural, and vibrational typographies and poetics; invited myopic readings of artworks and texts; handled the tangible, intangible, and concealed; documented ephemeral encounters through hallucinatory recall; expanded the perceptual and performative space of publication; navigated uncertainty through blundering; and animated intersensory translations and conversations.

Fayen is the founder of independent imprint 3-ply, which approaches publishing as an experimental site for the creation, dispersal, and archiving of texts. She is the co-founder of the Access Lab and Library (ALL) with Lloyd Mst and Jon Tjhia. Working in partnership with artists and presenting organisations, ALL prototypes methods and tools for access beyond baseline compliance; access that aligns with individual and collective ethics and creative practices.

Since 2016, Fayen and artist and Yindjibarndi woman Katie West have collaborated on an intermittent project, Museum Incognita, grounded in custodial ethics. Through sensorial scores and encounters, performative tours, and intertwining threads of story, the Museum Incognita has hosted intimate gatherings that activate collective readings of neglected and obscured histories.

From 2017-2019, through a residency with the Artist Initiative of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Fayen collaborated with conservators to initiate 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. From 2019 - 2024, Fayen was on the Board of Directors of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Naarm/Melbourne.

Selected exhibitions include: With Cane in Hand, I Dance a Duet for One, for Two, for Three, for Four…, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney, 2022; Adelaide//International, Endnote: The Ethical Handling of Empty Spaces, SAMSTAG Museum of Art, Adelaide, 2021; The National, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2019; Eavesdropping, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2018; ee//hm, KADIST, San Francisco, 2016; Beyond Exhausted, Physics Room, Christchurch, 2016; […] {…} […], Gertrude Glasshouse, Melbourne 2016; Human Commonalities, V.A.C. and the State Museum of Vadim Sidur, Moscow, 2016; Endless Circulation, TarraWarra Biennial, Healesville, 2016; Habits and customs of _______ are so different from ours..., Kadist, Paris, 2016; Foot-notes, 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial, Yekaterinburg, 2015; Just as Money is the Paper, the Gallery is the Room, Osage Art Foundation, Shanghai, 2015; and Sunny and Hilly, Minerva, Sydney, 2014.

In 2024, Fayen and collaborators received a Green Room Award for Design & Technical Excellence, and a nomination for Outstanding Experimental and Contemporary Performance, for the stage production ~~~~~ “...derelict in uncharted space...”, conceived by Fayen and Benjamin Hancock, and presented at Chunky Move, Naarm Melbourne for the 2023 Melbourne Fringe Festival. They also received two Melbourne Fringe Awards for Sound and Technical Excellence, and for Innovation in Dance for the live performance season and audiodescriptive radio broadcast.

In 2022, Fayen was awarded the State Library of Victoria Marion Orme Page Regional Fellowship. In 2019, she was a finalist in the Incinerator Award for Social Change, and a finalist in the Experimental Print Prize of Castlemaine Art Museum. Fayen was a Creative Victoria Creator 2018. She was awarded the Melbourne Sculpture Prize Rural and Regional Development Award 2017, and an Ian Potter Cultural Trust Award 2017. She was a finalist in the John Fries Award 2017, a resident artist at Gertrude Contemporary 2014-2016, and a finalist in the Macquarie Emerging Artist Award in 2014.

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