Dr Virginia Keft

Dr. Virginia Keft is a proud Muruwari woman, living and working on Dharawal Country and Gadigal Country. She is a multi-disciplinary award-winning artist and curator, First Nations producer, and researcher. Her practice undulates between the mediums of painting, sculpture, weaving, mixed-media, installation and wood-work.

Dr Keft’s work is a statement on the resilience of tradition and the persistence of cultural memory. Her work explores deeply personal themes of home, motherhood, and connection to the natural world. She weaves narratives of Country with ‘truth telling’ through a First Nations lens. The iconography of colonial Australia is subverted, engulfed, and re-imagined to address the uncomfortable truths of colonial erasure of Country.

Dr Keft was recently announced the winner of the Grace Cossington Smith Art Award for 2024 and awarded Highly Commended for her site specific installation at North Sydney Art Prize. In 2023, Virginia was the winner of the 2023 yapang Emerging Art Prize, winner of Muru Award at HIDDEN Rookwood Sculptures, and winner of the First Nations Award at m16 Artspace Drawing Award.

She currently holds the position of Producer, First Nations at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, where she leads, bangawarra Art Yarns: for older and Elder mob. She is project lead for Weaving Collective - a partnership between the Powerhouse Museum and Parramatta Artist Studios (PAS) that will oversee the creation of a weaving garden on the new Parramatta Powerhouse site. Virginia is the producer and director of Wollongong’s longest running school for contemporary belly dance, Cinnamon Twist. She holds a PhD from the University of Wollongong and is proud to be one of Wollongong City Council’s current artists in residence for 2024 at Wollongong Creative Studios.