Rhett D'Costa

Biography

Lives And Works,Dja Dja Wurrung, Central Victoria, Australia

Rhett acknowledges Dja Dja Wurrung people as the Traditional Owners of the land on which he lives, learns and works. He extends his deepest respect to Aboriginal Elders, past, present and emerging, recognising their continuing connection to land, sea and community.

Born in Bombay, India, Rhett D’Costa migrated to Australia at an early age. His pan-disciplinary practice draws on his Asian/Australian hybrid background and extends from the evocative use of colour to complex expressions of identity and belonging. His recent collaborative work engages experientially with the Dja Dja Wurrung lands where he currently lives.

In a career spanning thirty years in art practice and tertiary art education, his particular focus has centred around the Asia-Pacific region. He has exhibited widely, and his work is represented in public and private collections. He is currently an Honorary University Fellow with RMIT University.

Rhett’s  pandisciplinary projects center on the ‘right to belong’, exploring the role of resilience and optimism in the intersecting areas of migration, identity, nationalism and belonging. His research focuses on ideas connected to culturally composite ethnicities, mixed race communities and the negotiation of the porosity of place, belonging and identity. More recently the ‘right to belong’ extends his interests in identity formation in terms of sexuality and culture.  These interests take into account shifting social and political circumstances and the tensions and consequences of mobility and migration in transnational environments.