Paola Balla

Paola Balla is a Wemba-Wemba and Gunditjmara woman of Italian and Chinese heritage. She is an artist, curator, speaker, educator and cultural producer – having developed Footscray Community Arts Centre’s first Indigenous Arts and Cultural program, and as a Senior Curator in First Peoples exhibition, Melbourne Museum.

Recently winning the Three Dimensional Award at the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards 2014, her work is driven by social justice, addressing impacts of colonial trauma (particularly on women and children), and creating spaces of ownership and listening through creative practice.

Paola’s visual art is intimate; through familial and individual exploration, she turns her lens upon her immediate world and personal history. By examining the very definitions of what it is to be Aboriginal in an urban setting, Paola’s work challenges us to rethink preconceived attitudes and assumptions.