THE ARTIST

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Kaff-eine is a storyteller who creates street art, contemporary art and film to share stories with audiences around the globe.

 

A former equestrian instructor, tree-lopper, public servant and lawyer, she left the office to concentrate on her art in 2012. Since then, she has painted public walls and private commissions across Australia, Germany, France, USA & the Philippines; exhibited in successful solo and group exhibitions; collaborated on paintings with groups as diverse as recently-arrived refugees, remote outback farming communities, remote Indigenous communities; slum residents, and street art festival-goers; and illustrated three children’s books (Vera and The Promise, Scholastic; and Heartcore, Berry Street). In 2016 Kaff-eine co-founded the international creative collective Cheeseagle, in which she is a creative director and the lead artist. Cheeseagle has produced four exhibitions & two documentaries, including the award-winning feature film Happyland (2017), which follows Kaff-eine’s unique art-as-housing project with the notorious Happyland dumpsite slum community in Manila, Philippines.

 

In 2017, Kaff-eine was one of six street artists invited to paint on decommissioned wheat silos for the Silo Art Trail, Australia’s largest outdoor art gallery; she painted a young proud female shepherdess, and a gentle horseman on the silos in Rosebery (population 4-9), Victoria.

Kaff-eine’s watercolour portrait of Stanislava Pinchuk (Miso) is currently a finalist in the 2018 Black Swan Prize for Portraiture.

 

Kaff-eine is currently interested in exploring the potential for expanding her creative social impact projects; working and collaborating in remote communities; and further developing her street art as a storytelling medium.​

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THE ARTWORK

 

Sistagirls are transgender Aboriginal Australians traditionally known in the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, as yimpininni. Kaff-eine painted an elegant portrait of Shaniquá, a Tiwi Islands’ sistagirl, to celebrate the strength, power, character & beauty of the Territory’s sistagirl community.

 

Kaff-eine feels honoured to meet and be able to paint Shaniquá, and learn more about this special part of traditional and contemporary Aboriginal identity.

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