_{I pay my respects to the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Turrbal and Yuggera Peoples, their Ancestors and Elders, on whose unceded lands my practice has unfolded. I recognise the care, knowledge and community that First Nations People have nurtured across generations, lands and waterways, and continue to sustain today. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land. Pay the rent.}

Dr Jacina Leong 梁玉明 is an artist-curator, researcher and educator working across cultural, education and social impact contexts. Her practice examines how cultural organisations facilitate gathering in response to crisis, while interrogating the systemic conditions that shape arts and cultural work. Drawing on 18 years of experience in organisational leadership, transdisciplinary research and socially engaged creative practice, she engages questions of social infrastructure and infrastructural critique; the entanglement of climate crisis, burnout and arts labour; and the politics and ethics of care. She is also concerned with what it means to sustain practice, and toward what ends, often thinking with meridians, breath and composting as metaphor, method and ethic.

Selected Work.

From 2023 to 2024, Jacina was Acting CEO/Director of Next Wave, where she led organisational strategy, partnerships and long-term planning for a not-for-profit organisation with longstanding commitment to supporting early-career practitioners. Her work included developing cross-sector collaborations with A Climate for Art and CAST (Contemporary Art and Social Transformation) RMIT, and securing the nine-year tenancy of the Brunswick Mechanics Institute.

Her earlier roles span governance, leadership, curatorial and public engagement across a range of cultural and educational contexts, alongside sustained work in higher education as a researcher, educator and postgraduate supervisor. This includes Co-Chair (2023-2025) and Co-Director of Bus Projects (2021–2022), Public Programs Curator at The Cube (2012–2017) and Ipswich Art Gallery (2009–2011), Gallery Manager at Jan Murphy Gallery (2011–2012), Creative Producer for the Creative Industries Precinct (2008), mentor for the ACMI CEO Digital Mentoring Program (2022) and co-founder of the Ars Electronica Guerrilla Knowledge Unit (2017).

Selected Partnerships and Collaborators.

Jacina is currently lecturing within the School of Art, RMIT University, and also serves as Chair of the School’s Industry Advisory Committee. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) and Masters by Research from QUT, and PhD from RMIT University. Jacina lives in Narrm/Melbourne with her dog Soda.

_{Find me elsewhere online: LinkedIn and Substack.}