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Water Ritual

Photo-paintings

With the support of Multicultural Women of Victoria (formerly known as VIRWC), I met weekly with fifty migrant and refugee women over 45 workshops. Together we embroidered a dress with symbols representing our home, our roots, our longing, our womanhood, beliefs and memories. I took this dress to the mountains of the Jaitmatang people, in Falls Creek, where the sky and water meet.

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Process

In the creeks, by the falls, I wear this dress and the many voices of the women embroiderers hold me while I dance, in communion with water, with nature, with life itself. In the bush, I am at peace.

Eyes closed, I listen to my heart and how my every cell vibrates with the river and the sky above me, I let the water I am made of synchronise with the water I step in. In a trance-like state, I enter in connection with nature and let it heal me.

Artworks

With the support of

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Born in France, Sofie Dieu’s first encounter with art was through church. With a penchant for ritual and spirituality, the artist is best known for her fragile, sombre, and sometimes violent ink paintings and textile works.

 

Poetic and humanist, her practice draws on her journeys to China and Australia. She explores how identity and memory fluctuate according to their immediate environment. Landscapes, people, secrecy, healing, and the dichotomy between light and darkness are some of her recurring themes.

  

Multi-art prizes and award finalist, her work was included in the Sydney North Art Prize, Waterhouse Natural Science prize and the Contemporary Art Award amongst others. In 2016, she worked on the Camperdown Cemetery installation for Sydney Biennale. In 2017, her work will be shown during Vivid and Mental Health Month in Sydney.

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