{"id":70222,"date":"2026-08-12T08:11:48","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T08:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/70222\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T08:11:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T08:11:48","slug":"parramatta-shopping-centre-art-installation-combines-lgbtq-experiences-and-cultural-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/70222\/","title":{"rendered":"Parramatta shopping centre art installation combines LGBTQ+ experiences and cultural identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the hustle of shoppers in Parramatta, an art installation with personal shrines symbolises an oasis for the queer and gender diverse community seeking visibility and acceptance.<\/p>\n

The Rainbow Crossing has been a signifier of LGBTQIA+ acceptance in Sydney for years, but members of Greater Western Sydney’s community say these safe spaces are difficult to come by west of the CBD.<\/p>\n

Artist Bonnie Huang’s work, Dare to Dream, is a multimedia art program which combats this by tying the experiences of LGBTQ+ people in the area with cultural heritage.<\/p>\n

“There are a lot of cultural nuances, even religious nuances, within our community and everyone’s different backgrounds, so there’s definitely an element of balancing different backgrounds and different cultural needs,” they said.<\/p>\n

\"Bonnie<\/p>\n

Huang with their art installation at Westfield Parramatta. (ABC News: Adam Griffiths)<\/p>\n

Connection through collaboration<\/p>\n

Huang worked with the C3West program at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and ACON Westie, a social community for queer and gender diverse people in Western Sydney, to host gatherings.<\/p>\n

\"Pedro<\/p>\n

Mr de Almeida says about 70 people previously not known to each other worked on the project. (ABC News: Adam Griffiths)<\/p>\n

MCA senior curator Pedro de Almeida said the program aimed to bring artists and communities together to “address local concerns”.<\/p>\n

“Over a period of nine months, we engaged with people from Mount Druitt, Bankstown, Blacktown, Parramatta, Granville,” Mr de Almeida said.<\/p>\n

“Dare to Dream essentially attracted a cohort of about 70 community members all unknown to each other.”<\/p>\n

Huang led participants at gatherings to create sculptures of personal shrines which were embedded into the installation at Westfield Parramatta.<\/p>\n

“A key part of my experience as a queer person living in Western Sydney was this sense of loneliness and wanting to find other people like me, but also wanting to find spaces where we could be together,” Huang said.<\/p>\n

“We connected over this desire of wanting to find each other in the places where we grew up, or even the fact that a lot of us moved out of Western Sydney in order for us to find explicitly queer spaces.”<\/p>\n

A balancing act\"An<\/p>\n

Drag queen Kaia Papaya says she found more of a community in the CBD, rather than in Western Sydney. (ABC News: Marcus Stimson)<\/p>\n

Drag queen Kaia Papaya grew up in Sydney’s south-west and used to travel upwards of two hours a day to study at the University of New South Wales.<\/p>\n

“There were obviously a lot more gay spaces in universities as well, but we just didn’t have time to attend those,” she said.<\/p>\n

Papaya said she found more of a community in her early 20s in Sydney’s CBD.<\/p>\n

“At least 10 years ago, there weren’t any spaces in the west \u2026 we were literally meeting each other at night time, like 8pm onwards, and it was pretty dangerous,” she said.\"An<\/p>\n

Papaya says it will take time for Western Sydney to become more accepting of queer people. (ABC News: Marcus Stimson)<\/p>\n

Papaya hoped in the future, queerness would become “readily accepted” in cultural settings.<\/p>\n

“It’s a great way to break the ice, not only for the younger generation, but obviously for the parents \u2026 where it’s not so much a taboo topic,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Even something as small as the Lunar New Year festivals, something that holds true to the cultures that live around those areas.”<\/p>\n

She said “it would take time” for Western Sydney to catch up with the open acceptance of queerness, like in the CBD.<\/p>\n

Where queerness and culture overlap\"Duy<\/p>\n

ACON’s Duy Tran says safe spaces need to be incorporated within cultural spaces. (ABC News: Adam Griffiths)<\/p>\n

Duy Tran from ACON Westie said the sheer geographical size of Western Sydney posed a challenge to improved access to queer spaces.<\/p>\n

“There isn’t a centralised queer space here like there is in the inner city, and a lot of communities are quite isolated, and they feel like they don’t have a place to be able to be themselves,” Mr Tran said.<\/p>\n

“Because there hasn’t been a lot of those spaces that really speak to the multicultural and LGBTQ+ side of things in tandem, there hasn’t been an opportunity for community to develop.”<\/p>\n

Mr Tran said, due to safety concerns, some queer people in Western Sydney turned to more “discreet” approaches to access services or safe spaces, but said this was slowly changing.<\/p>\n

“If you compare it to even two years ago, things are looking a lot more different now,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I think [safe spaces] need to be incorporated within cultural spaces.<\/p>\n

“I feel like when you bring culture along, and bring people along, and bring our family along, and bring your parents along, they are a lot more receptive than you think.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amid the hustle of shoppers in Parramatta, an art installation with personal shrines symbolises an oasis for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[95282,17038,33842,95273,95277,95279,8518,17912,253,95278,95271,95285,95286,30043,29731,95283,13592,95274,32479,3162,25033,596,95284,95280,95281,95276,2637,247,95275,95272],"class_list":["post-70222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-acon-westie","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-artwork","tag-bonnie-huang","tag-c3west","tag-cultural","tag-cultural-heritage","tag-culture","tag-dare-to-dream","tag-drag-queen","tag-drag-queen-kaia-papaya","tag-duy-tran","tag-gender-diversity","tag-installation","tag-lgbt-social-group","tag-lgbtqia","tag-linguistic-diversity","tag-mca","tag-mental-health","tag-multiculturalism","tag-nsw","tag-pedro-de-almeida","tag-queer-acceptance","tag-queerness","tag-safe-spaces-for-gay-people","tag-shopping-centre","tag-sydney","tag-western-sydney-safe-spaces","tag-westfield-parramatta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}