Studio visit - Matthew Asling April 2025

DS: Matt I wanted to start by talking about your heritage, because it informs so much of your work. Probably not the first time you’ve come across this, but I’ve found some people confuse Syrians and Assyrians. Given there isn’t that wide a knowledge of Assyrian history, could you give us a précis of your people’s history, from your perspective?

MA: Yes! This is a very common misconception that most Assyrians have likely experienced. I think the confusion stems because of linguistic and historical overlap, but we are distinct ethnic groups. Assyrians are an indigenous Mesopotamian people with a history stretching back over 4,000 years. Geographically our ancestral lands are modern-day Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and northeastern Syria; while Syrians are modern inhabitants of the nation-state of Syria, which includes a diverse mix of Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, and Assyrians.

My own family history traces to the Tiyare tribe of the Hakkari mountains, in southeastern Turkey. During the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocide my family migrated to the city of Qamishli in North-eastern Syria where my grandparents grew up, they then migrated to Australia in the 1970’s via Lebanon.

DS: Could you tell us about your studio and working environment? Does this influence the work you are making?

MA: I have been very lucky with my studio situation. I share a large open format studio on Flinders Street, looking out over Fed Square, together with my girlfriend Bec (a photographer) and close friends including an architect, fashion designer and a textile-based artist. This diversity definitely influences my approach to my own practice, opening me up to learning new modes of making work, and the open format is really great for me as I like to be able to discuss ideas about each other's work a lot and have that feedback.

DS: Could you tell us a little about the two bodies of work you are planning for Melbourne and for New York?

MA: My solo exhibition for Melbourne is titled Pardisa. This is derived from the ancient Assyrian word for garden or enclosed space, which later came to be associated with the concept of paradise. Rather than presenting it as an idealised or utopian setting, the exhibition considers Pardisa as a complex and layered space shaped by cultural, historical, and geographical influences.

The work explores how ideas of homeland are remembered, maintained, and constructed over time, particularly within diasporic communities. It draws from Assyrian historical geography, spanning the river valleys of Mesopotamia, the mountains of Hakkari, where my family originally hails from, and the plains of Tur Abdin. This fragmented and often interrupted map continues to inform contemporary identity through oral histories, traditions, and inherited memory.

Found materials such as offcuts, construction remnants, and worn textiles play an important role in the exhibition. These materials function both as references to physical displacement and as symbols of ongoing preservation and reconstruction. Their embedded histories and weathered surfaces suggest a quiet continuity, reflecting the persistence of culture through periods of upheaval and change.

The second body of work I am developing is for the NADA art fair in New York, and is titled Clay Tablets. This series revisits ancient Assyrian artefacts such as cuneiform tablets, votive objects, and architectural fragments that have been removed from their original context and are now held in Western collections. Rather than reproducing these objects, the work focuses on reinterpreting them through contemporary materials.

Clay Tablets considers the ongoing relevance of cultural objects and the way they inform understandings of language, history, and identity. The work also acknowledges the history of cultural extraction, and how artefacts are often presented through institutional and colonial frameworks. By repositioning these forms within a contemporary context, the series explores how narrative can be revisited and extended through artistic practice. These works exist between historical reference and creative interpretation.

DS: How do you choose the materials you are working with? Some of these, like gauze, seem quite charged and emotionally laden?

MA: I choose materials based on their conceptual relevance and the meaning they can carry beyond their physical form. Materials like gauze, muslin, coffee, and tarpaulin appear frequently in my work because they are familiar and carry layers of cultural and historical significance. These materials are often linked to the body, labor, shelter, and sustenance, allowing me to explore themes of cultural continuity, displacement, and care.

There is also a cultural dimension to these materials. For example, gauze and muslin may evoke domestic practices, methods of preservation and also hold deep cultural significance in their use in funerary rites and symbols relating to our religious identity, while coffee has both personal and communal associations and is used during Assyrian funerals to symbolise the bitterness of death. I’m interested in how these materials function as quiet carriers of cultural experience, particularly in the context of a diasporic identity.

In my work, materials are not just surfaces to work on but active components within the piece. They respond to both form and content, and I select them for their ability to hold meaning, recall specific histories, or suggest new ideas within the larger conversation of the work.

I love using these found and unconventional materials in reference to childhood experiences like my grandparents building a veggie patch, pergola, and sitting areas in the backyard of their house in Keilor. They would create small sanctuaries in the backyard with scrap materials like wood, tarps and random materials my Grandpa would bring home from his work at a car yard in Fawkner. This has influenced my approach towards collecting materials and being resourceful with what’s around. Friends will often give me materials that remind them of my work, or I will source things from op shops, skip bins, household rubbish or the street.

DS: The titling of your work often uses Neo-Aramaic alongside an English translation. How are you finding learning Neo-Aramaic?

MA: It is quite frustrating that I don't speak the language as I grew up around it with my mum, grandparents and all the extended family speaking it. I think a big part of it is that as a child I really didn't see the importance of needing to speak it which I obviously regret deeply now. At this point I am trying to learn it on my own, but I am looking at enrolling into Assyrian school or finding a private tutor in the near future.

Learning a language without proper tutelage is a slow process, but it’s incredibly important for me personally and for the continuity of the culture. The language offers a deep connection to my Assyrian heritage. As I learn, I’m reconnecting with a part of my identity and community that has been impacted by time and displacement.

Using Neo-Aramaic in my work, particularly in the titles, allows me to honor and preserve the language while also sharing it with others. Although it’s a gradual process, each step reinforces my commitment to keeping the language and culture alive.

DS: You have some exciting travel coming up, what’s on the agenda for the rest of 2025?

MA: It’s already shaping up to be a packed year for me. Straight after my show here in May, I’ll be heading to New York for the NADA art fair, and from there, embarking on my first trip to Europe thanks to the Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch Traveling Fellowship. I'll be visiting England, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, primarily to explore museums that house Mesopotamian artefacts, as well as to spend time in my family’s historic tribal lands in the Hakkari region of southeast Turkey.

This part of the trip means a lot to me. No one in my immediate family has been back to these ancestral lands since leaving the Middle East, so it feels like an important moment of reconnection for both myself and my family.

I’ll be traveling light, so while I’m away I’ll mostly be working on drawings, with plans to properly begin my next body of work once I’m back in Melbourne.

I had also hoped to visit Iraq, but due to the current political climate, it wasn’t possible this time. Still, it’s something I’m definitely aiming to do in the coming years.

A brief list, what are you currently:

Reading
● The Kingdom - Emmanuel Carrére
● Meetings With Remarkable Men - G.I Gurdjieff
● Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide, A History - Joseph Yacoub


Watching
● Australian Survivor
● British and European crime dramas
● As many games of footy as I can catch

Listening
● Re-listening to The Lord of the Rings audiobooks
● Johnny Cash American Recording albums
● ABC Radio National

Enjoying
● footy
● studio
● cooking