Leyla Stevens

Leyla Stevens is a Balinese-Australian artist who works with lens-based storytelling. Her practice is informed by ongoing engagements with storied places, archives, cultural memory and performance lineages through a transcultural lens. In 2021 Leyla was awarded the 66th Blake Art Prize for her film, Kidung which engages with Bali’s histories of political violence. Her immersive multi-channel video installations have been exhibited widely, including at: Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), TarraWarra Museum, UQ Art Museum, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace Sydney, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Guangdong Times Museum, Seoul Museum of Art and the 17th Jogja Biennale.

HOW DOES YOUR SUBMITTED WORK RESPOND TO THE CIRCA 20:25 MANIFESTO?
TARU, a film by Leyla Stevens, expands upon landscape traditions in Balinese art that make visible the unseen and non-human registers of place, to foreground the island’s current environmental precarity. The film draws upon Balinese philosophies and performance lineages that invite a consideration of storytelling as an important act of survival and preservation. At its center is the performance of a young female dalang (shadow puppet master), who sings in both rage and lament over the destruction of Bali’s forests and rivers. In Balinese society, the dalang holds a revered role; and in wayang kulit (shadow puppetry) spiritual teachings are passed on in ritual form.

TARU understands refugia—spaces of collective resistance—as sites where these teachings become calls to action, repair, and restitution. In the context of planetary crisis and colonial aftermaths, the film calls for the protection of place and culture as inseparable and vital.

IF AWARDED THE £30,000 CIRCA PRIZE, WHAT 10-MINUTE WORK WOULD YOU CREATE – AND HOW WOULD IT EMBODY THE SPIRIT OF REFUGIA?
TARU presents future rememberings of Bali’s forests, along with their animal and spirit protectors. Following on from Leyla’s previous film (PAHIT MANIS, Night Forest), the proposed film takes as a departure point a series of video and audio recordings taken in one of Bali’s rare old growth forests in the north-west of the island. Aligned within the spirit of refugia, TARU creates future archives of habitat and species that are under threat from the island’s ongoing land degradation and water crisis. The proposed film centres upon Balinese philosophies that understands the natural world as important dwelling sites for spirit protectors, as well as current movements of land activism, to reflect on alternative methods of ecological and cultural protection and continuation. The final film will intertwine forest recordings with ancestral song and dance to tell the story of Bali’s last surviving forests.

FOLLOW LEYLA STEVENS ON INSTAGRAM

Funding for the CIRCA PRIZE is generated entirely by the #CIRCAECONOMY, a circular model that reinvests proceeds from affordable art sold on CIRCA.ART into new public art commissions, charitable causes, art education and prizes. Since launching in 2020, the initiative has raised over £1 Million, placing artists and communities at the centre of an economy that continually reinvests in the future of art and culture.

The CIRCA PRIZE 2025 winners will be revealed LIVE in Piccadilly Circus on Monday 13 October, with a special 30-minute award ceremony starting at 20:00 BST. Don’t miss it!