In their Names

Image: by Ayman Kaake

Photographs and video installation by award winning photographer Ayman Kaake

In this intimate installation, an inner-landscape unfolds about the experience of artist Ayman Kaake, his community and the criminalisation of homosexuality. Ayman’s friends are his models and they hail from multiple ethnic backgrounds, identifying as queer, gay and trans. In their Names marks out tenderly the repercussions of the criminalisation of sexuality internationally for the lives of individuals affected.

Ayman Kaake was born in Tripoli, Lebanon and arrived in Australia as a telecommunications engineer graduate in 2011. Enamoured by the camera, he lied to his family to pursue his artistic journey – enrolling in secret in visual arts in Melbourne. Ayman’s initial works were made without an artist community. As a young queer man in a country where he did not speak the language, he used his camera, purchasing his first in 2015, to photograph mainly himself. Ayman knows the experience of what it is to feel oneself a foreigner and be conflicted in ones identification with home. His works evoke borders - those of governance, culture, sexuality and oneself - through water and sand, garments and objects of ritual, and through stones which are precariously balanced on the body. Moreover Ayman reminds us of punishment and danger – the dire consequences of being uncovered and revealed as queer around the world.

In 2019 Ayman was the winner of the RMIT excellence in staged photography and in 2022 won the Brunswick Street Gallery Small Works Art Prize for 'Lullaby'. In 2023 Ayman was a finalist in the Nillumbik Prize Contemporary Art for his work 'The Wind in her Veil'.

The presentation of this exhibition is an initiative of Nillumbik Shire Council and aligns with supporting an equitable and inclusive community where human rights are respected, participation is facilitated, barriers are addressed and diversity is celebrated.

The exhibition continues until Sunday 3 March 2024. Please note the Eltham Library Community Gallery is closed on 26 January 2024.