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. Here, she developed cross-sector collaborations with A Climate for Art and CAST (Contemporary Art and Social Transformation) RMIT, and secured 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 based at RMIT University, where she is a Research Fellow on the ARC Discovery Project Making Histories: Young People as Visual Historians of Changing Cities, and lectures in contemporary art theory within the School of Art. She also serves as Chair of the School of Art Industry Advisory Committee, and is a co-author of the forthcoming book Museums and Digital Social Futures: Audience Experiences in Everyday Life (Routledge).
She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) and a Master’s by Research from QUT, and a PhD from RMIT University. Jacina lives in Narrm/Melbourne with her effervescent dog, Soda.
I was born on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country, leaving Narrm/Melbourne with my family at the age of ten to live in Meajin/Brisbane. I returned to Narrm/Melbourne after twenty-two years of living and studying and working on Turrbal and Yuggera Country. I have ancestry that connects me to Guangdong, Hong Kong, Puglia, England and Ireland. How I see the world, how I relate to this colonised country, how I understand my response as a settler-migrant, artist-curator, educator and researcher are shaped, in part, through these interesecting lineages.
Find me elsewhere online: LinkedIn and Substack.
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. Here, she developed cross-sector collaborations with A Climate for Art and CAST (Contemporary Art and Social Transformation) RMIT, and secured 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 based at RMIT University, where she is a Research Fellow on the ARC Discovery Project Making Histories: Young People as Visual Historians of Changing Cities, and lectures in contemporary art theory within the School of Art. She also serves as Chair of the School of Art Industry Advisory Committee, and is a co-author of the forthcoming book Museums and Digital Social Futures: Audience Experiences in Everyday Life (Routledge).
She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) and a Master’s by Research from QUT, and a PhD from RMIT University. Jacina lives in Narrm/Melbourne with her effervescent dog, Soda.
I was born on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country, leaving Narrm/Melbourne with my family at the age of ten to live in Meajin/Brisbane. I returned to Narrm/Melbourne after twenty-two years of living and studying and working on Turrbal and Yuggera Country. I have ancestry that connects me to Guangdong, Hong Kong, Puglia, England and Ireland. How I see the world, how I relate to this colonised country, how I understand my response as a settler-migrant, artist-curator, educator and researcher are shaped, in part, through these interesecting lineages.
Find me elsewhere online: LinkedIn and Substack.