Upcoming Program
As a closing gesture for Knowing Otherwise, join us for an afternoon of poetry and performance by a gathering of Naarm/Melbourne-based artists whose practices move between mysticism, ritual and non-rational ways of knowing.
Readings and performance by:
Manisha Anjali
Mel Deerson
Sammaneh Pourshafighi
Jake Adam Treacy
Saturday 28 March, 2–3.30pm
MUMA, Free entry
Register here
Knowing Otherwise
7 February – 2 April 2026
Knowing Otherwise is a major group exhibition exploring how artists enact ancestral, spiritual and embodied ways of knowing amid eroding trust in government and dominant Western frameworks.
Plan your visit
Access information
Physical access: MUMA is a ground-floor, wheelchair-accessible gallery with accessible and all-gender bathrooms. Gallery spaces are on a level surface. Contact us for a parking map or further information.
Arcane Memory: Poetry and Performance Closing Event is programmed in conjunction with Knowing Otherwise, 7 February – 2 April 2026, MUMA. Naarm/Melbourne.
Image: Manisha Anjali. Photo: Leah Hulst; Mel Deerson. Photo: Thibaut Vandame; Sammaneh Pourshafighi. Photo: supplied; Jake Adam Treacy. Photo: Dakota Gordon.
Readings and performance by
Manisha Anjali
Manisha Anjali is a writer and researcher who works with the language of dreams and exile. She is the author of Naag Mountain (Giramondo 2024), which was listed for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, the Stella Prize, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Anne Elder Award. She is one half of Whelk, an ambient music and poetry collaboration with Genevieve Fry. Manisha has lived in Fiji, Aotearoa and Australia. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne.
Mel Deerson
Mel Deerson works across art, writing and teaching. They are currently interested in medieval dream poetry, mystic gardens and queer art. Recent projects include the book ‘The Dream of the Cherry Tree’ (Stray Pages, 2024), the exhibition and publication 'fairy', (Mel Deerson and Spiros Panigirakis, 2024) and ‘The Dream of the Mirror’, a video and text work commissioned to accompany the first ever exhibition of Derek Jarman’s work in Australia (UNSW Galleries). Mel has presented work in spaces such as the Derek Jarman Lab Birkbeck (London), TarraWarra Museum of Art, Liquid Architecture, Getrude Contemporary, West Space, and Monash University Museum of Art. In 2023 they were awarded the Monash University Prato Centre Artist in Residence. Mel is currently undertaking a PhD in Fine Art at UNSW.
Sammaneh Pourshafighi
Sammaneh Pourshafighi is a Queer genderfluid Muslim who arrived in Australia as a refugee after the Iranian Revolution and grew up on the problematic paradise of the Gold Coast. A hereditary witch, her ancestral tribes originate from Isfahan, Gilan, and Kurdistan. Her work frequently examines identity politics, mental health, diasporic tensions, ethno-futurism, and the complex relationships between bodies and environments through an intersectional feminist lens.
Jake Adam Treacy
Jake Adam Treacy is a queer non-binary curator, arts writer and poet working on unceded Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong Country. A graduate of the University of Melbourne's Master of Art Curatorship and Art History, their exhibitions and writing have been presented nationally.
Jake's curatorial practice conjures spaces that inspire, challenge and transform through atmosphere, liminality and storytelling. Engaging a praxis of collaboration and resilience, they radicalise peripheries through esoteric and chthonic ways of knowing.
An avid reader and researcher of the occult, Jake's creative practice and poetry emerges from queer mysticism, dreams, sex and doom metal—where shadows speak and thresholds shimmer.