Sounds of the Desert: Stories of the Cameleers

Explore the forgotten histories of the Afghan cameleers in a day of storytelling, knowledge-sharing, poetry, performance, and film.

Between 1860 and 1920, Australia relied upon mostly Islamic cameleers from South Asia, Southwest Asia, and North Africa to transport supplies, communication infrastructure, and colonial society between regional outposts. Known as ‘Afghan’ cameleers, they traversed the continent’s interior, intersecting with the tracks already established by First Nations peoples, forming an intercultural bond.

Bringing together descendants of these communities, this program considers parallels between the conditions endured by early cameleers and the contemporary experiences of Afghan and Middle Eastern diasporas in Australia today. The program features a conversation with visual artists Elyas Alavi, Raymond Zada, and Nici Cumpston; a special performance of Afghan classical music from Mustafa Faizi and Murtaza Damoon; a poetry reading from Adrian Mouhajer; and a film screening of ‘Watandar, My Countryman’ directed by Jolyon Hoff. Join us as we celebrate the enduring legacies of these communities across art, music, and culture.

11.00am | Welcome to Country
Aunty Lola Ryan, La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council

11.10am | Artist Talk
Hear from visual artist Elyas Alavi and learn more about his new work The Sound of Silence / صدای سکوت commissioned for the 24th Biennale of Sydney. Honouring the stories, songs, and wisdom of the Afghan cameleers, Alavi will provide insight into the oral histories, archives, and collections he engaged with while developing the project.

11.30am | Conversation
This conversation brings together visual artists and cameleer descendants Raymond Zada and Nici Cumpston, along with artist Elyas Alavi to explore themes of connection across generations, culture, and place. Together they will discuss the shared values fostered in relationships between Afghan cameleers and First Nations peoples, and the enduring legacy of those bonds today. The conversation will reflect on the role of art and music in bridging the experiences of cameleer descendants with those of recent migrants to Australia.

12.30pm | Break

1.30pm | Musical Performance
Join us for a special live performance of Afghan classical music from esteemed vocalist, instrumentalist, and composer Mustafa Faizi, accompanied by tabla player Murtaza Damoon. Together Faizi and Damoon will perform sung poetry and spiritual compositions. Despite the current ban on music in Afghanistan imposed by the Taliban regime, Faizi and Damoon are committed to preserving and sharing Afghan musical traditions.

2.00pm | Poetry Reading
Adrian Mouhajer is a queer non-binary Lebanese-Australian writer and poet. Mouhajer will share a reading of recent work exploring themes of queerness, love, desire, family, and cultural connection.

2.10pm | Film Screening: Watandar, My Countryman
From acclaimed director Jolyon Hoff comes a deeply touching journey of self-discovery, identity, and connection through the eyes of Afghan refugee, Muzafar Ali. When Muzafar discovers that Afghans have been an integral part of Australia for over 160 years, he begins to photograph their descendants in a search to define his own new Afghan-Australian identity.

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Presented in conjunction with the 24th Biennale of Sydney, ‘Ten Thousand Suns’ at UNSW Galleries, 9 March – 10 June 2024.

BIOGRAPHIES

Aunty Lola Ryan is an Aboriginal woman from the La Perouse Aboriginal Community, located on the northern side of Botany Bay. She is a devoted mother to three children and loves spending her spare time with her family and three grandchildren. Lola is the Aboriginal Health Worker for the Child & Family Health Team of South Eastern Sydney Local Health District, a position she has held for 20 years. Her passion is improving the health outcomes for Aboriginal families with children aged 0-5 years and to work on projects that can make a difference in engaging Aboriginal families to take care of their health and wellbeing as well as their family’s needs.

Elyas Alavi is a visual artist with a multidisciplinary practice that spans painting, installation, moving image, poetry, and performance. Alavi’s practice often examines the complex intersections of race, displacement, memory, gender and sexuality accounting for hyper invisibilities and troubling received notions of culture and belonging. More specifically, his work complicates histories in the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region and thinks through the links between the globalised condition, settler colonialism, and who is implicated in the mobility and displacement of Black and Brown bodies.

Nici Cumpston is an artist, curator, writer, and educator of Barkandji, Afghan, Irish and English descent, and currently lives and works in Adelaide on Kaurna Country. Cumpston combines her time curating, collaborating, and creating photographic works that share stories of Aboriginal occupation and ongoing survival on Country. She commenced as the inaugural Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) in 2008 and has been the Artistic Director of Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at AGSA since its inception in 2014. Her work is held in major institutions and private collections both nationally and internationally.

Raymond Zada is an Adelaide-based visual artist of Barkandji, Afghan, and Scottish heritage, working primarily with photography, video, and digital design. He’s also an award-winning radio broadcaster with 13 years’ experience in production, presentation, and technical operation. In 2013, Raymond won the New Media category of the 30th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. In 2012, he won the Works on Paper category of the 29th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award for his work, racebook. An edition of 10, racebook has been acquired by several public galleries in Australia and overseas as well as private collections.

Adrian Mouhajer is a queer non-binary Lebanese writer and editor from Western Sydney. They have performed their poetry for Bankstown Poetry Slam, Queerstories, Eulogy for the Dyke Bar, and Cement Fondu. Adrian’s articles have been published in SBS Voices and their poetic essay was shortlisted for the 2022 SBS Emerging Writers Competition. Adrian won Highly Commended in the 2021 Sydney Opera House Antidote Mentorship for Diverse Emerging Writers. Adrian is published in Povo (Sweatshop, 2024); they are also the editor of Stories Out West – an anthology of LGBTIQ+ First Nations and CALD writers with a connection to Western Sydney. Adrian is currently working on their debut essay and poetry collection.

Jolyon Hoff is an acclaimed Australian filmmaker who returned to Adelaide in 2020 after spending the prior 15 years living and working in Nigeria, Indonesia, Nepal, and Washington DC. His feature documentary, The Staging Post, was awarded Highly Commended for ‘Best Stand-Alone Documentary’ by the Australian Director’s Guild and was one of best performing documentaries in Australian cinemas across 2017–18. Previous films include Searching For Michael Peterson, about a 70s schizophrenic surfing legend, Morrowind Babies, inside revered computer game company Bethesda Softworks, and Aceh – Ten Years After the Tsunami for USAID, now on permanent display at the Aceh Tsunami Museum. Jolyon is committed to telling entertaining and important stories which bring our community together.

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Image: Elyas Alavi, VASL (detail from series), 2024. Photographic print. Courtesy of the artist