COLLECTIVE TREASURES

30 x cardboard boxes, mixed media

Collective Treasures (2024) was a collaborative art project that invited residents of the Illawarra to reflect on the things they hold dear. Over five weeks, Jes R. R. Alexander led community-based workshops at Wollongong Community Hub, Warrawong Community Hub, and Wollongong Youth Services, where community members, many with no prior art-making experience, came together weekly to assemble, paint, and collage the things they treasure into cardboard boxes.

Works were made by a range of community members, including those with diverse cultural, ethnic, and gender identities. In a time when identity is often misrepresented or stereotyped, Collective Treasures offered space for the radical act of sharing through authentic self expression, inviting the wider community to be curious about their neighbours, and to recognise their own treasures in the boxes of others.

This project was funded by Wollongong City Council’s Small Cultural Grants Program, and would not have been possible without support from Evoon Yacoub (Wollongong Public School Hub), Dzenet Tinjak (Wollongong Youth Services), and Farah Alashhab, Ngaire East and Amy Edwards (Warrawong Public School Hub).