Tom Campbell was in residence with Treasure Hill Artist Village to develop to learn the Sumazau, 9 March – 24 May 2026.

During his residency with PICA at Treasure Hill Artist Village in Taipei, Tom Campbell explored connections between language, migration and his Kadazan heritage. His research looked to the shared histories of Austronesian languages and movement across the region, while reconnecting with family in Sabah. 

Tom’s multidisciplinary practice brings together poetry, textiles, video and socially engaged work, tracing connections across time, place and his Kadazan/Scottish lineages. In this conversation, he reflects on his time in Taipei and how the residency expanded his thinking around language, translation and family history. 

You went into the residency thinking about your Kadazan heritage and language. What did you encounter during your time in Taipei that shifted or expanded the way you were thinking about this work and your relationship through your matrilineal line?  

I went over to Taipei with the intention to research patterns of convergence, connection and migration across the region – Taiwan is a place where Austronesian languages have been found across history, over thousands of years, and there are a number of competing hypotheses as to how people travelled in and out of this region.  

This was very interesting to me as the Kadazan language is part of the Austronesian language family (a broad collection of languages which also includes Malay, Tagalog and more distantly, Māori). Among other things, I’m thinking about how we are connected across oceans and across time, and my interest sits in how we can articulate these threads of connection in poetic ways. 

It was great to visit the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung, where I got to have conversations with curatorial and collections staff while viewing objects from across the region, including from Borneo. 

As Taiwan is so close to Malaysia, I also spent some time visiting my family in Sabah, reconnecting after 20 years, singing karaoke, seeing where my mum grew up, visiting places that are special to my family and seeing how much things have changed. 

Your residency developed into poetry and video work alongside your research. How did these forms emerge through the residency and what did they allow you to explore that perhaps research or conversation alone couldn’t?  

My practice is about poetry made material while responding to layers of context. In doing so, I’m interested in following ideas even if they might seem like a detour, as a way of listening to what the body and brain want.  

The work emerged as a response to the exhibition space, which was an old underground shelter. I wanted to play with light, spaciousness, duration and how you can embed layers and layers of time within these qualities. This drew me to working with video and text. Poetry can be a way to intervene when conversational language doesn’t feel adequate.  

I’m interested too in which parts of the work are public-facing and which layers might reveal themselves after a number of viewings, or with additional knowledge, or once the eyes have adjusted to the darkness. 

You spent time translating with family as part of the process. What did that act of translating open up for you, both in relation to language and to your own family history?

This residency opened up ideas of language and translation in so many beautiful ways. I’d worked with my grandfather previously on translating poetry from English into Kadazan and it was the first time I also got to work with Boorloo-based Taiwanese artist Yu-Ying Chuang, who translated some of my poems into Mandarin. 

What I love about this process is that it’s impossible to get a completely direct translation, either word for word or in meaning – you’re always making choices about whether you translate for meaning or translate for feeling and something is going to change or transform along the way. Especially with poetry, this can open up really interesting and beautiful discussions about the intent of a particular line, or how it may be read or understood within a local context or informed by a culture’s particular idioms. 

Translation also speaks to my interest in what we can know, vs what remains unknown. Often there’s an impulse to understand, and to do so quickly and fully. Yet in many cases and particularly when it comes to family and oral histories, this is a slow, unfurling and sometimes impossible journey. It takes the pressure off not to have to know immediately. 

How did the people, places and encounters you experienced in Taiwan find their way into the work? Were there any unexpected conversations or connections that stayed with you?  

While I encountered many emotions and challenges associated with being in a new place by myself (especially when my Mandarin is pretty rubbish!) – I ended up making wonderful friends and found myself saying yes to a whole bunch of unexpected adventures along the way, from island scooter passenger to international art courier. So many things stayed with me, and have sunk into the river of my mind, waiting to be sifted up again. 

Poetry from everyday conversations and turns of phrase became part of the work, alongside a brief and intense fascination with puppets, triangulations of other people’s understandings of the Mandarin text and rearticulations of Austronesian migration through conversations at the Prehistory Museum. I also came away with an expanded understanding of the linguistics of weaving and a renewed confidence in translation as a conceptual framework. 

Looking back now, what do you think the residency gave you as an artist and where do you see the work going from here?

Such a luxurious amount of unbroken time outside the routines of daily life!

Time, space, confidence to reconnect with my practice, to articulate a complex set of research questions and to find the joy in the process of making and the process of not knowing. Approach to language and translation – forever changed. 

Some of the work created during this residency will be on show as part of the Canberra Art Biennial in September 2026 and I hope that it might get a WA outing sometime in the future too. More broadly though, I’m looking forward to continue sifting through the archive of what was generated during my time in Taiwan.  

PICA’s International Studio Exchange Program is supported by PICA’s Art Ambassadors and Treasure Hill Artist Village. This residency is supported by Creative Australia through the International Engagement Fund.

Images courtesy of the artist.