Competition Graduates Printmaking Screen Print Solo artist

Gradspotters Prospects | Maria Thaddea

posted by Robyn Pitts January 9, 2024

We’re stoked to be launching Gradspotters, our brand new platform dedicated to championing emerging talents in the field of print. Applications are currently open to those who graduated in 2023 and are looking to forge their future in the print industry. Successful applicants will have the chance to have their work featured on our platforms, gain personalised advice from our team, and bag themselves a heap of exclusive goodies.

Below, we check out the work of one our talented applicants so far, Maria Thaddea, whose work focuses on graphics, experiential spatial design (set design, exhibition curation, staging) and screenprint, and looks at abstract notions of perception, cultural identity and belonging.

One of her submitted projects was But you’re not really; a screenprinted body of work that explores feelings of cultural inadequacy, reflecting on the sense of self and belonging within the diasporic community through process philosophy (a framework that emphasises the fluidity of experienced reality opposing traditional Western views of being and permanence). Informed by Maria’s cultural upbringing, these works take Indonesian and Chinese imagery and rituals, and put an Australian twist to it; “Asian, ‘but not really'”.

Implementing a a diasporic twist to the classic tear-away Chinese calendars and angpaos (red envelopes), mixed with Indonesian street food imagery, Maria aims to represent and make sense of the intercultural discrimination present within the diasporic migrant community with the hope of eliciting intercultural and cross-generational understanding. The collection consists of a day-by-day tear-away calendar, a set of posters and labels inspired by Indonesian street-food cart signage, a set of red envelopes, and a pair of bowls and rice paper scroll depicting an Australian version of the Chinese-Indonesian ‘Ayam Jago’ motif.