Australian interdisciplinary artist Zara Collins is concluding her month-long Open International Arts Residency at Rimbun Dahan with an open-studio sharing of her works in progress on Sunday 27 September 2026, from 11am to 6pm. More info about visiting Rimbun Dahan in Sept 2026…
About the Artist
Zara Collins is an Australian interdisciplinary artist working across porcelain and paper. Her practice explores memory, the trace and ways everyday objects and materials can hold personal and cultural histories. Collins uses a variety of processes and material transformation to explore absence, longing, loss and the passage of time.
She holds an MFA from the National Art School and a BVA from Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University. Her practice has been supported by an Ian Potter Foundation Cultural Grant and residencies including the Australia-China Council Residency (Beijing), Bundanon Trust (South Coast NSW) and Rimbun Dahan (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) in September 2026. Zara has exhibited widely, presenting eight solo exhibitions and participating in numerous group shows since 1999. Her work has been recognised internationally in exhibitions such as Talente (Germany), Young Glass (Denmark), SOFA (sculpture objects & functional art) Chicago and the Japanese Jewellery Competition (Tokyo).
https://www.zaracollins.com/
https://www.instagram.com/collinszara
About the Residency
Above: Works in progress
Zara is using her residency to respond to the Malay Traditional Textile Collection on site, continuing her engagement with ideas of the passage of time, the material trace, and the ways textiles can act as a metaphor for the temporality of human existence.
Working with Korean Kozo paper and copper, Zara is experimenting with drawing, layering and tracing processes to translate and abstract forms encountered within Rimbun Dahan’s architecture and textile collection. She has been weaving fine copper threads into abstract motifs, exploring the relationship between line, material and structure, while using paper to record, transform and reimagine visual and tactile encounters with the site.
The residency provides Zara with an opportunity to work slowly and experimentally, allowing new processes and ideas to emerge through sustained engagement with a series of small-scale material experiments. These A5 studies provide a space to test ideas and material combinations quickly and without judgement, allowing successful experiments to be developed further or up-scaled, while others can remain as traces of the exploratory process.
Below: Works in progress from the series “Could not be spoken”, 2026, Kozo papers and graphite
