Ancestor Spirits and In the Half Light

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art presents Andy Ewing: Ancestor Spirits, the first posthumous survey of pioneering queer Vietnamese-Australian artist and curator Andrew (Andy) Hau Ewing (1964–2021), alongside Kirthana Selvaraj: In the Half Light, a newly commissioned body of work by the inaugural recipient of the Andy Ewing Fellowship.

Presented across 4A’s galleries and 4A LAB, the exhibitions explore cultural inheritance, queerness and the body. Artworks, archival material and personal ephemera offer an intimate account of Ewing’s life, while Selvaraj’s paintings respond to his explorations of identity, memory and illness through her own experiences. Together, the exhibitions trace how Ewing’s practice continues to resonate through a new generation of artists.

• Andy Ewing: Ancestor Spirits

A pioneering queer Vietnamese-Australian artist, Ewing challenged who could be seen, desired and represented within Australian visual culture. His works confronted racist stereotypes and the fetishisation of Asian male bodies while examining cultural hybridity and chronic illness. Working primarily on paper, he combined bold linework, expressive figures and surreal imagery with personal candour and wry humour.

Born in Melbourne, Ewing lived and worked across Australia and in Indonesia, maintaining close connections with artists and communities. Ancestor Spirits brings together artworks, sketches, archival material and studio ephemera spanning his career. The exhibition follows three intersecting concerns: cultural heritage and hybridity; queerness and body politics; and health, illness and perseverance, tracing ideas that developed from his early illustrations into increasingly personal compositions.

• Kirthana Selvaraj: In the Half Light

As the inaugural recipient of the Andy Ewing Fellowship, Kirthana Selvaraj has spent the past year researching Ewing’s practice, including through the Australian Queer Archives. In the Half Light considers how his explorations of identity, queerness and illness resonate within another life. Her paintings approach these questions through her experiences of diaspora, cultural inheritance and a changing relationship with her body.

An artist of Tamil ancestry, born in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland and based on Gadigal and Wangal land in Sydney, Selvaraj works across painting, research and writing. Her practice examines diasporic identity through gender, sexuality and embodied memory.

• About Andy Ewing Fellowship

Established by the estate of Andrew Ewing and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, the Andy Ewing Fellowship supports emerging queer-identifying artists of Asian heritage through the commissioning, development and exhibition of new work. Its inaugural presentation honours Ewing’s contribution while creating space for new interpretations of his legacy.