Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson
Elham Eshraghian-Haakansson is an award-winning Iranian-Australian researcher, director, and video artist. Her arena of work centres itself within communal and collaborative social practice. Her research navigates inherited stories and post-memory felt by displaced community through the poetics of the moving image. She invites viewers to become the ‘witness’ rather than the ‘passive bystander’, examining empathy in film-poems, and immersive multi-media experiences facilitating a critical discussion surrounding empathy, custodianship, compassion, and social change. She has collaborated with multiple art organisations, such as Spaced, Next Wave, Victoria Park Community Centre, Forrest Research Foundation, PICA, Community Arts Network, Immerse Australia and more recently, Co3 Dance Contemporary. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, receiving numerous prestigious art awards for her video installations such as the 2018 Dr. Harold Schenberg Art Prize, 2020 Invitation Art Prize, 2020 14th Arte Laguna Special Prize Award and the 2022 Ellen José Art Prize. Her artistic values prioritise agency, empathy and legacy advocating for community arts programs, as co-founder of the Second Generation Collective, which seeks to bridge intergenerational gaps, navigating trauma and communal care.