Profile

Robin DiAngelo knows a lot about white privilege – it’s in her DNA. The American academic, author and anti-racism advocate talks about how structures of whiteness and so-called white progressives are continuing to damage the lives of people of colour. ‘I grew up in poverty … I was a feminist for most of my life before I realised I could also be an oppressor. But I draw from my experience of oppression … I think that helps. The key is not to exempt myself from being an oppressor, just because I experience oppression. Ask anyone if they’d rather be poor and white or poor and brown – I knew I was poor, but I also knew I was white.’

A chat with theatre designer Tracy Grant Lord, side stage at a rehearsal for Twelfth Night.

Living in different places around the world has left artist Polly Borland feeling like an outsider with unwanted opinions, but she’s happy to let the subversion of her work speak for itself. “She grew up alone in this apartment with this doll,” Borland said of Dare Wright, creator of the Lonely Doll books. “Her mother would go out, leave her alone. Eventually she became a model and started taking photos. It’s no wonder I’m into dress-up. I get a lot from childhood. What might look childlike is not. There’s a sinister undertow to a lot of my imagery.”

On the eve of the release of his directorial debut, Acute Misfortune, adapted from Erik Jensen’s book about artist Adam Cullen, Thomas M. Wright talks about how his reaction to Cullen turned from revulsion to deciding he was the perfect subject. “Adam seemed to stand for so many things that I just can’t. And I think, particularly, cloaking that behaviour and those attitudes behind a veil of art is just fucked.”

When Angel Olsen first found community in the Chicago indie music scene, she was an unabashed fan-girl. Now she’s an accomplished artist who commands the stage with a voice that is pliant and pitch perfect. “Something changed when I got introduced to indie music. Then later someone was like, ‘You need to listen to Leonard Cohen, you need to listen to Fairport Convention, King Crimson, The Velvet Underground…’ And I was like, ‘Okay, this is it.’ ”

For the 21st Biennale of Sydney, artist Ciara Phillips is creating a collaborative printmaking studio, posters from which will run each week in The Saturday Paper. She talks about the role of art in social change. “I find it really difficult to explain: how do you make art? Basically it’s the sum total of all the things I think about.”

As Elizabeth LeCompte’s theatrical take on a controversial 1971 debate about women’s liberation heads to the Sydney Festival, the director talks about art and feminism, then and now. “We thought [The Town Hall Affair] was too urbane and distant for most people to be interested in,” she says plainly, but “things just broke around it”.

A conversation with Him Sophy, creator of Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia.

Known as a fearless documentary filmmaker, Eva Orner has shone a light on tragic situations in Iraq, Kabul and Nauru. In her latest work, she turns her attention to the problem of mobile phones. ‘If I think it’s compelling, important, interesting, worthwhile, that overtakes everything else.’

Making public art with a purpose with Situations’ director Claire Doherty.