Dr Amaara Raheem is a Sri Lankan born Australian dance-artist, researcher, educator and writer. She lived in London for fifteen years and is now based between Naarm (Melbourne) and Gariwerd (Grampians) in rural Victoria, Australia.
Amaara is a collaborative, independent dance-artist and scholar most interested in working with diverse practitioners to make interdisciplinary, intercultural, site-responsive acts of repair. Her work takes multiple modes including live events, audio-visual installation, sound works and text and is presented in theatres, studios, galleries, museums, outdoor spaces, on radio or podcasts. Amaara investigates conceptually rigorous performative situations of intimacy, hospitality, and the personal-as-political that resonates with wider audiences and builds community.
In 2021 Amaara was awarded a PhD by practice from the School of Architecture & Urban Design, RMIT University. Her doctoral research was on artist-in-residence programs offered worldwide and in particular a re-framing of 'in-residence' as choreographic and design tools. In 2022 Amaara was selected for ABC Top 5 (Arts) - a residency which aims to discover Australia's next generation of dynamic thinkers and give them a voice. In this program she further explored histories and contemporary practice of artists-in-residence as local/global art phenomenon. In 2024, Amaara was awarded a State Library of Victoria Fellowship to investigate artist schools, camps and colonies in 19th century Melbourne, as precursors to what we now consider the grounding principles for site structures in-residence. This Fellowship offers dedicated time and space to write a chapter for her upcoming book, 'Residency Practices: A Field Guide for the Artist-in-Residence'. Amaara's other major project in relation to participation, community and activism is co-making a residency hub on 16-acres of bush adjacent to the Black Range Scenic Reserve, where she lives with her partner. Together, and in community, they are exploring decolonising relations with land, with First Nations people, with the more than human, and with the planetary.
What--or how--does [your] community communicate? What [for you] are the key principles and values of participation? What can be said about the lives--and bodies--of artists and activists you most admire? What keeps [your] community up at night? What kinds of radical thought or action does participation inspire [for you]? What texts, podcasts or performances influence your activism? To ask these kinds of questions and to reflect on the answers--unfixed and multiple--is how I most like to dance these days.
Dr Amaara Raheem