Amrita Hepi

Amrita Hepi is an award-winning artist working with dance and choreography through video, the social function of performance spaces, installation and objects. Using hybridity and the extension of choreographic or performative practices, Hepi creates work that considers the body’s relationship to personal histories and the archive. Hepi’s work has taken various forms (film, performance, sculpture, text, lecture, participatory installation), but always begins with the body as a point of memory and resistance.

Hepi considers the black and brown female body as archive – distinct from, and in opposition to prior views of the archive as a documentary, deposit or bureaucratic agency. In Hepi’s documented moments, the archive is never static, but rather dynamic and innovative.

In 2020 Hepi is a Gertrude Contemporary artist in residence (2020–22) and is currently working with Kaldor projects/ Serpentine UK as a participating DOit artist. She was recently commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art to make Neighbour, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales to make ~ CASS ~. In 2019 she was a commissioned artist for The National: New Australian Art 2019 and the recipient of the dance web scholarship to be mentored by Anne Juren, Mette Ingvarsten and Annie Dorsen. In 2018 and again in 2020 she was the recipient of the People’s Choice award for the Keir Choreographic Award and was named in Forbes Asia 30 under 30. 

Hepi trained at NAISDA and Alvin Ailey NYC. Amrita Hepi’s work has been presented and performed in museums, galleries and festivals, including, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Carriageworks, Sydney; Sydney Opera House; Immigration Museum, Melbourne; 4A, Sydney; The Menil Collection, Houston; Art Central, Hong Kong; Dark MOFO, Tasmania; Theatre Challoit, Paris; Tanz Im August, Berlin; Womadelaide, Adelaide; Australian Centre for Contemporary with Next Wave Festival for Asia TOPA: Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts.

Photo credit: Nikki To