I acknowledge, pay respect, and pay the rent to the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I live and conduct this creative practice: the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations. I pay my respects to their Ancestors and Elders, past and present, and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.




Dr Jacina Leong 梁玉明 is an artist-curator, educator and researcher engaged in critical processes of community engagement, arts leadership and post-representational curatorial practice.

She is currently Acting CEO/Director of Next Wave, Co-Chair of Bus Projects, Chair of the RMIT University School of Art Industry Advisory Committee, and a member of the Darebin Council Art and Heritage Advisory Panel. She lives and practises on the unceded Country of the Wurundjeri people in Narrm/Melbourne, and is of mixed racial (Chinese and Italian) background.

Jacina is commited to the role that arts organisations—as public, pedagogic spaces—can play in bringing people together to explore and respond to complex crises: through situated, responsive, and purposeful forms of engagement.

This commitment is informed by her formative experience as an early school leaver, and engagement with informal spaces of learning. It has since been shaped by her sixteen years experience working with children and young people, school and university students, emerging and established artists, creative and cultural producers, researchers and educators, across social history and visual art museums, contemporary and regional galleries, universities and schools, local councils, arts festivals and libraries.

She is a former Co-Director of Bus Projects, Public Programs Curator at The Cube and Ipswich Art Gallery, Producer for the Creative Industries Precinct, Sessional Academic at RMIT University and La Trobe University, mentor for the ACMI CEO digital mentoring program, and co-founding member of the Guerrilla Knowledge Unit.

Jacina has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) and Master of Arts (Research) from the Queensland University of Technology, and a PhD from RMIT University. 

Her PhD explores the conceptual and practical tensions of care, and the real-world implications and challenges of practising care within (pandemic-impacted, colonial capitalist) arts organisations. The major creative output of her PhD was caring in and through our practices. This is an online resource developed to facilitate practitioner reflexivity, through questions that consider not only the complexities of care, but also the purposes, values, and ethics of practice. 


Learn more about Jacina and her research, select projects, publications and presentations.


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