Tiyan Baker is an artist who works with installation, photography, video and sculpture. Her practice draws on historical research, language, digital processes and material play to trace unseen relationships between words, place and stories.
Centring her Bidayǔh culture in her works, Baker is also interested in things she has unknowingly inherited. Living far from native lands, culture and family, in the midst of the (re)colonisation of Borneo, she explores all that can be mistranslated or lost, and what can manifest in its place.
Her practice celebrates indigenous knowledge and explores their radical potential to upend Western ideologies. Notable works include Personal Computer : ramin ntaangan a computer built in the style of a Bidayǔh longhouse; mouthbreather, filmed on native lands in Sarawak, entirely from the inside her open mouth; and nyatu’ maanǔn mungut bigabu, which uses autostereogram technology to embed lost Bidayǔh words into images of Bidayǔh native lands, reflecting on the hidden connection between language and landscape.
In Borneo, Indigenous peoples weave ceremonial cloth, and use beads, charms and carved figurines to imbue woven cloth with supernatural power. Weaving connects artisans to the spirit world through dreams and powerful motifs.
Building on her research into Bornean textiles, Baker will use her grant from TiNA to gain new capabilities in tapestry weaving.
Baker was born and raised on the Larrakia lands known as Darwin and currently lives and works on the Awabakal and Worimi lands known as Newcastle, Australia. She has shown her works widely across Australia and is the winner of the 2022 National Photography Prize awarded by the Murray Art Museum Albury.
