About

Toni Hassan is an interdisciplinary visual and social practice artist and award-winning writer of South African ancestry.

Toni is a graduate of the ANU School of Art and Design (specialising in painting as an undergraduate, and completing Honours in 2021 in the Sculpture and Spatial Practice workshop). She is interested in art as a window to notice the world and make sense of personal and collective experiences and histories. In her drawing, painting, digital and installation work she investigates power relations, culture (myth, contemporary events, ritual and patterns of human relating) and nature (non-human centric perspectives, aiming to see connections).

Her artwork is held privately and in public and private collections and been in major group prizes including the Fisher’s Ghost Art Prize as a consecutive finalist.

Toni is also a trained freelance facilitator aimed at harvesting wisdom for the common good. Her group work is informed by her advocacy and community engagement experience in public health, education, gender equality and economic justice.

She is a Walkley Award-winning journalist who has written for The Saturday Paper and The Sydney Morning Herald. Her formative years in the trade were at the ABC including at “AM” and the Religion and Ethics Report. She has appeared on the ABC TV’s The Drum program talking about human sexuality and faith.

Toni is the author of Families in the Digital Age, an adjunct research fellow with the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, at Charles Sturt University and a former Associate with the Centre for Responsible Technology at The Australia Institute.

Toni was born in Durban, South Africa, grew up on Gadigal land/Sydney and raised a family in Canberra. She lives and works on the lands of the Kaurna people in Adelaide.

Toni serves as and serve as its ‘Integrating the Arts’ Convenor for the national Women’s Climate Congress and a member of Bilya, wokring at the intersection of climate, art, and culture.