My name is Vasilia, but you can call me Lia.
I’m a curator, creative producer, exhibitions coordinator, writer and educator working across contemporary art and cultural projects in Australia and internationally.
I curate exhibitions and develop cultural projects that bring artists, ideas, audiences and places into conversation with each other. My practice is grounded in research, storytelling and collaboration, with a particular interest in overlooked perspectives, community-led narratives and the ways exhibitions can create meaningful connection.
Ilias Lalaounis Jewellery Museum · Athens, Greece
Developed and curated an interactive digital interpretation project using TouchDesigner, translating the museum’s collection into an accessible, participatory experience. Drawing on independent research across the collection, I shaped the project’s curatorial narrative and developed object interpretation, wall texts and exhibition content, alongside educational resources and hands-on activities for children and families.
I’m drawn to curating because it sits somewhere between research, storytelling and problem-solving. I love digging into an idea, asking the right questions, finding the connections that might not be immediately obvious, and then figuring out how to bring those ideas to life in a way that feels engaging and accessible.
I’m passionate about working collaboratively with artists and communities to develop exhibitions and cultural projects that feel thoughtful, relevant and genuinely connected to their audiences.
Tutti Arts · Seoul & Adelaide · 2025–2026
Deudgi was a cross-cultural residency exchange between Seoul, South Korea and Adelaide that ran from 2024 to 2026. I joined the project in 2025, and the exhibition that I organised and curated brought together Australian learning-disabled artist Lewis Constantine and neurodivergent South Korean artist Euihyun Shin. The concept was built around what happens when two artists from completely different cultural contexts and ways of moving through the world make work together, and what that collaboration reveals about identity, connection and the act of making itself.
I directed the exhibition and facilitated the public artist talk, creating conditions where audiences could engage directly with Lewis and Euihyun about their processes, their exchange, and what it actually felt like to navigate creative collaboration across culture and neurotype. The work was vibrant and the conversation was real. It is exactly the kind of exhibition I believe art should make possible.
Tutti Arts · Adelaide, Australia · 2025
DAS After Dark showcased a selection of works by disabled artists, illuminating diverse perspectives and creative practices often underrepresented in contemporary art. The exhibition explored themes of identity, resilience and expression, celebrating the unique ways artists navigate and interpret the world around them.
Tutti Arts, Brighton / Port Adelaide / Barossa · SALA 2025
Holey Surreal celebrated the imaginative and inventive works of learning-disabled and neurodivergent artists across Tutti Arts' three studio locations: Brighton, Port Adelaide and Barossa. The exhibition highlighted surreal and bold creations, reflecting Tutti's ongoing commitment to inclusive, high-quality contemporary art developed over the past two decades.
Each studio brought its own distinctive perspective, showcasing the diverse styles, practices and voices of the artists. With over 39 Brighton studio artists actively creating and exhibiting work, Holey Surreal offered audiences a vibrant and playful exploration of creativity, imagination and the extraordinary talent nurtured across Tutti Arts' studios.
Adelaide Festival & Sabir · Adelaide, Australia · 2023–2024
Create4Adelaide was a year-long, large-scale initiative inviting thousands of young people from Australia and abroad to respond to the environmental issues shaping their futures through visual art, design and storytelling.
My role was both organisational and hands-on: I liaised directly with schools and artists, researched and developed the curatorial framework, selected and ordered works, wrote all wall text, led installation teams and installed technical elements, and facilitated public Q&As with young artists in front of live audiences.
I held the curatorial vision across an enormous volume of work and an enormous number of voices, shaping something coherent and urgent from material that was deeply personal to the people who made it. The project culminated in physical and digital exhibitions at the 2024 Adelaide Festival.
Carclew Arts Organisation · Adelaide, Australia · 2023
Touch Starved was South Australian institution Carclew House's major annual exhibition, and I conceived and built it from the ground up. I identified and selected thirteen emerging Adelaide artists whose practices I felt were asking the right questions about what COVID had done to people, specifically what it had done to our need for closeness, for contact, for one another.
Working across installation, sculpture, video and interactive work, I held the curatorial vision across thirteen different voices and thirteen different ways of making, shaping them into something that felt like a single, necessary argument. The premise was urgent: what happens to human beings when touch is taken away? I built an exhibition that held grief and tenderness at the same time, creating space for audiences to sit with something they had collectively experienced but not yet been given room to process. People stayed. They felt things and spoke about it.
Carclew House · Adelaide, Australia · Oct 2023 – Jan 2024
Carclew's final exhibition for 2023 brought together art, science and imagination in an exploration of scale and perception, inviting audiences to view the world both under the microscope and through the telescope, revealing the microcosms that, repeated and interconnected, form the vast 'macro' of life.
Emerging Adelaide artists Billie Nøhr, Ryan Denner, Miles Dunne, Benen Hamon and Sean McGowan transformed reclaimed materials into intricate, tactile works. Visitors were handed magnifying glasses to literally zoom in on hidden details, then zoom out to reconsider their place in the broader tapestry of life.
Carclew Foyer · 2023
An exhibition inviting viewers to explore the present through the nostalgic lens of film. Emerging Adelaide photographers Sam Sharplin, Ryan Denner and Ben Preston-Ward explored the connections between memory, love and nostalgia, and the ways we romanticise the present, mourn the future and cling to memories.
Carclew House · 2023
Paintings by Millie Hopton and Ruby Udys exploring the realisation that every person lives an inner world as rich, deep and complex as one's own. Evocative, intimate works revealing the unseen emotional landscapes and fleeting internal moments that shape human experience.
Talks, tours, workshops and programs for young people
Essays, criticism, fiction, poetry and curatorial writing
I write essays, fiction and poetry, alongside the curatorial, interpretive and proposal writing at the heart of my exhibition practice. My essays, articles, think pieces and art reviews explore contemporary art, culture and the ideas that connect them, from close readings of individual works to broader questions about who art is for and how it reaches people.
