Tiyan Baker

Lives and works in Newcastle NSW, Australia

Artist statement

Tiyan Baker is an artist who works with installation, photography, video and sculpture. Her practice draws on historical research, language, digital processes and material play to trace unseen relationships between words, place and stories. Centring her Bidayǔh culture in her works, Baker is also interested in things she has unknowingly inherited. Living far from native lands, culture and family, in the midst of the (re)colonisation of Borneo, she explores all that can be mistranslated or lost, and what can manifest in its place. She has shown her works widely across Australia, and is the winner of the 2022 National Photography Prize awarded by the Murray Art Museum Albury. She was born and raised on the Larrakia lands known as Darwin and currently lives and works on the Awabakal and Worimi lands known as Newcastle, Australia.

Artwork

• To tangle together like coursing water, 2026. Three channel video installation
• To tangle together like coursing water (installation documentation), 2026. Three channel video installation
• To tangle together like coursing water (mnemonic device), 2026. Resin cast teeth, lyocell twill, nylon thread, glass beads, vinyl stickers
• Player Count One: Studies of Bung Sadung in Fortite, 2025. 1. Building a longhouse at the site of the first Bukar Bidayǔh settlement, 2025, digital video, sound, bamboo, nuts, bolts, sisal rope, wire 2. Ancestral longhouse - view from inside topography at night, 2025, digital print mounted on dibond. 3. Ancestral longhouse - view from inside topography at midday, 2025, digital print mounted on dibond. 4. Ancestral longhouse - birds eye view in the morning, 2025, digital print mounted on dibond. 5. Ra-ung (sunhat): custom umbrella design for Fortnite, 2025, polystyrene, resin, acrylic paint, canvas, wooden dowel, bamboo, various lace trim and ribbon, wooden beads, bias binding, seaweed twine 6. Ra-ung (sunhat): custom umbrella design for Fortnite, 2025, digital print mounted on dibond. 7. Durian bomb: custom shockwave grenade design for Fortnite, 2025, 3D print, cast resin, dye. 8. Top view of Bung Sadung and surrounding villages, 2025, digital print mounted on dibond.
• Personal Computer : ramin ntaangan, 2023. computer parts, computer monitors, screensaver videos, bamboo, timber, palm and coconut leaf, plastic twine, mesh cable sleeving, heirloom machete, sunflower seeds, LED lighting, foam, paint, lucky bamboo
• nyatu’ maanǔn mungut bigabu , 2021. autostereogram photographic prints on cotton rag
• My mother's tongue, 2022. Foam, epoxy resin, fibreglass mat, sand, water-based epoxy, paint, mica pigment, green food dye, yellow food dye, titanium dioxide, water, miniature water pump, duckweed, projection.
• Untitled (bamboo love poems 1-5), 2025. bamboo, wood, paint
• mouthbreather, 2023. Digital video, sound
• Head Party, 2022. durian, rope, string, fabric, thread, wire, coins, bells, beads, bamboo, vinyl, bowls and platters, sunflower seeds, fruit, resin teeth, hair, durian cookies, back scratcher, hand-rolled cigarette, ash tray, spoon, paper doilies