Mia Boe

Mia Boe is a painter from Brisbane, with Butchulla and Burmese ancestry. The inheritance and ‘disinheritance’ of both of these cultures focus her work. Mia’s paintings respond, sometimes obliquely, to Empire’s deliberate, violent interferences with the cultural heritages of Burma and K’gari (Fraser Island).

Mia’s art practice records and recovers Indigenous histories which Australia seeks to deny. This practice of recovery is urgent in contemporary Australia: the patient work of tracing historical trauma and violence can open new perspectives on the reasons for Aboriginal Australians’ present suffering.

Wominjeka (Welcome). We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. Yaluk-ut Weelam means ‘people of the river camp’ and is connected with the coastal land at the head of Port Phillip Bay, extending from the Werribee River to Mordialloc. The Yaluk-ut Weelam are part of the Boon Wurrung, one of the five major language groups of the greater Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the land, their ancestors and their elders—past, present and to the future.