Tia Keam

Tia Keam is an emerging artist based in the Naarm and Mallee region. Keam utilises sculpture and collage to enquire into personal realms of the queer femme body. Finding her practice “ like a form of therapy” (Olivia Bland interview, 2023), Keam invites people to think upon unconventional bodies, in manipulating used accessories and clothing. Interested in the physical process of repeatedly making and unmaking material conventionally used to contain the body, Tia presents shifts and changes our own bodies produce. She challenges the structural norms unintended for such a body to exist within.

"Tia", installation view.

Tia Keam's Purss' are vaginal iterations, representing the plethora of forms, shapes and sizes a woman can be. Made from friends and the artist's own second hand clothes. The deconstructed lingerie, scarves, tops and open purse act as an invitation for use, whether it be spare change, lip gloss, touch, sex, tampons. Pinned to the wall, the pieces are temporal, changing with time and context as do our own bodies, wardrobes and tastes.