Leyla Stevens

Leyla Stevens’ work explores Balinese cultural histories and ancestral lineages, through a transcultural and diasporic lens. This image from her film Witness depicts a banyan tree near a busy street intersection in Bali, beneath which lies an unacknowledged mass grave from Indonesia’s 1965-66 genocide. Stevens’ work explores how this buried past continues to haunt present topographies. This image draws visibility to points of erasure in the landscape, where histories of violence register as present absences.

Leyla Stevens is an Australian-Balinese artist who works within a lens-based practice. Her work explores the reparative potential of artmaking framed within political and social justice issues. In 2021 Leyla was awarded the prestigious 66th Blake Art Prize for her film Kidung, which engages with Bali’s silenced histories of political violence. Her most recent film, PAHIT MANIS, Night Forest, premiered as a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2024-25. Leyla’s immersive multi-channel video installations have been exhibited widely through major national and international group exhibitions, including recent presentations at: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, TarraWarra Museum, UQ Art Museum, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artspace Sydney, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Guangdong Times Museum and Seoul Museum of Art. She is currently a lecturer in Fine Arts at Monash University.