Intercultural creative expression in two Australian performance works – Counting and Cracking and Mother Tongue

ABSTRACT Art can assist in exposure to difference, which may in turn open up spaces for dialogue between differences. This capacity to encourage and intervene necessarily operates at various levels and spheres and, in the arts, requires creative leadership. Creative leaders are those artists, recognised by their peers and public as artists who generate new developments in creative content to explore diversity. It is predominantly artists of non-English speaking background (‘NESB’) who bear the burden to generate the opportunities as the main producers of content that interacts with multicultural Australia. I am cautious to place sole responsibility onto the minorised and underpaid multicultural artist to transform Australian society. However, their creative leadership roles show that their work and processes can produce new narratives towards intercultural dialogues. Many ‘NESB’ artists adopt this mantle by undertaking new creative production with the potential to transform the symbols within society. This paper explores the ways in which social and creative symbols are re-negotiated through the work of two Australian performance artists. Writer and director Shakthi Shakthidharan; and dancer and choreographer, Annalouise Paul exemplify how artists from diverse backgrounds increase the level of culturally diverse creative production. They make meaning through the contestations and negotiations of multicultural Australia.