Kaffeine
Combining creativity with a strong social conscience, Kaff-eine makes art, film and social impact projects with communities around the world, inviting audiences to engage with societal and political issues. She has built an international following for her painting practice, which includes photorealistic portraiture and stylised characters rich in symbolism and narrative.
Kaff-eine’s reputation for creating culturally relevant, genuinely collaborative public murals with communities has seen her invited to paint with First Nations Australians in Darwin, Alice Springs, and remote Arnhem Land island communities; refugee Australians in Sydney; and survivors of domestic violence, and genocides, in Melbourne.
She was the first female Australian artist to paint portraits on disused grain silos for Victoria’s Silo Art Trail, and the first Australian artist to create a pyrotechnic sculpture for Mexico’s international fireworks festival. She painted Australia’s first large public sistergirl mural in Darwin; the first mural for the inaugural Sugarbag Festival, celebrating the Top End's LGBTQIA+ communities; and she collaborated with Larrakia friend Mim to create the first female Larrakia artist mural on Larrakia Country, Northern Territory.
Kaff-eine’s other collaborative projects include her international creative collective Cheeseagle, which produced the award-winning feature film Happyland, following Kaff-eine’s unique art-as-housing project in the Philippines’ dumpsite slums; and Infinite Thanks, her travelling participatory exhibition about LGBTQIA+ gratitude, honouring rainbow deities and sharing stories of thankfulness.
Kaff-eine also enjoys working solo. Recently, her watercolour portrait of Stanislava Pinchuk was a finalist in the Art Gallery of West Australia's Black Swan Prize for Portraiture. She was invited to exhibit her work as part of Here I Am: Art by Great Women: curated by aMBUSH Gallery at the Australian National University Kambri Centre, in cultural partnership with the National Gallery of Australia.
This year, she completed her first large mural in Melbourne's legal precinct, as part of Melbourne's Flash Forward project. Titled 'The Lore and The Law', her mural makes public comment about the ongoing clash of First Nations' lore with the colonial legal system introduced by the British Government.
Kaff-eine is interested in further developing her solo public murals as a storytelling medium; and experimenting with more unconventional materials in her studio portraiture.