Te Ataata 2024 - Julie Stephen Chheng
AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies - Te Ara Auaha (DCT) is delighted to announce the 2024 Te Ataata artist in residence is Paris-based designer, illustrator and writer Julie Stephen Chheng.
The residence runs from July to August 2024.
During this time, Stephen Chheng and her partner, the artist Thomas Pons, will work on their project Landscapes in Construction.
“We are thrilled to welcome Julie as the 2024 Te Ataata artist in residence at AUT,” says the DCT Faculty's Associate Dean and Director, External Engagement Office Dr Yvonne Chan Cashmore.
“Her unique blend of design, illustration, and writing, showcased through diverse projects like Fortune Teller and Landscapes in Construction, reflects a captivating exploration of the intersection between tradition and technology.”
Stephen Chheng is a graduate of École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and her diverse body of work includes books, scenography, digital design and animation.
In 2014 she was artist in residence at Hong Kong Arts Centre, and in 2016 was digital arts laureate at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto.
Her work has also included creating spectacular paper window displays for the iconic French fashion house Hermès' Shanghai and Tokyo stores.
Stephen Chheng’s current projects - Fortune Teller and Landscapes in Construction - mix traditional and digital formats, and her practice playfully explores our relationship to nature and spirituality, inviting the spectator to place themselves in both tangible and virtual universes.
Dr Chan Cashmore says the residency, a collaboration between AUT and the French Embassy in New Zealand, underscores AUT’s commitment to fostering international connections and advancing transdisciplinary art-design-technology-science research.
“We look forward to the creative synergy that will unfold as Julie and her partner engage with our vibrant community and contribute to the dynamic landscape of Te Ataata."
About Te Ataata
Each year, AUT hosts a practice-based French scholar under the Te Ataata Residency programme, which is a joint initiative between AUT and the French Embassy in New Zealand, with the support of Institut Français.
The programme aims to develop collaborations and initiatives between the two countries and is an opportunity for the scholar to work alongside their AUT peers on interdisciplinary art-science research, with access to the same facilities, expertise and materials as staff during their stay in Aotearoa.
Hosted by AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies - Te Ara Auaha, the residency recognises that design as a discipline is central to advancing transdisciplinary learning and research. The faculty’s range of discipline areas include art and design; communication studies; engineering, computer and mathematical sciences; and creative technologies.