Yusuf Ali Hayat & Alice McCool, Place setting 5

Artist: Yusuf Ali Hayat & Alice McCool 
Title: Place setting 5, Who knew then that we would find ourselves, as adults, living in a country that only understood our other country in binaries 
Date: 2026
Size: 
Materials: Vinyl text excerpt from Visions, Dr Rashida Murphy. Published in Portside Review.

*Comes with perspex wall mount system 

“Not at the table" is deliberately undomesticated. The works on colonial Australiana
placemats reject the idea of 'a seat at the table' and questions what it means to seek
place on stolen land. The counter-invitations from indigenous, and racialised artists
and writers unsettle white ethnocentric assumptions around belonging, access, and
guest-host relations in the colony.

Alice McCool and Yusuf Ali Hayat have worked together across a broad range of creative projects. Their combined practices encompass writing, painting, moving image, sculpture, installation and photography. Their curatorial practice is underpinned by an interest in alternative exhibition spaces and presentations that create a platform to present counter-narratives and discourses that plot new relations between artworks, people, histories and contexts to present the world as infinitely complex, intricate, and wondrous.