Round Table: Craft and the Intangible

In this edition of the Round Table, artist Zaiba Khan will lead a discussion with four makers exploring craft as a conduit for the intangible. Drawing from her own creative practice, Zaiba will look at how we siphon grief, love, memory, healing, innate knowledge, oral history and spirituality into objects through the act of making.

A live event, the Round Table will take place at Craft Victoria’s Watson Place Gallery.

This event is presented as part of Craft Contemporary (1 – 31 Oct) – our annual gathering of craft-inspired events, explorations, exhibitions and more throughout Victoria.

Zaiba Khan is a Muslim Indo-Fijian artist based in Narrm/Melbourne, Australia and born in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Zaiba's practice is craft-based, engaging with object-making through gold and silversmithing, printmaking and textile. Zaiba seeks to translate the oral histories of her ancestors into visual language. Intricately detailed, labour intensive works are made using organic matter and sacred materials. As a descendent of Girmit (indentured labour), these materials hold particular significance, as does the labour of the body and hands. For Khan, making catalyses an innate ancestral muscle memory. Exploring the divine potential of the seed and its fruit, Khan sows them into her work as her ancestors did into the land, except this time with autonomy; in the hopes of creating portals for connection and healing.