Dameeli Coates is a Wakka Wakka woman whose family are from Southern Queensland. She is an emerging weaver, curator, textile artist and designer who grew up on Kaurna Yarta. She spent 20 years working as a Human Rights campaigner in Indigenous affairs, policy and programs across Australia for Government and non-government organisations. She lived for a short time in rural Vietnam and for 12 years in London raising a family and studying.
She has an Honours degree in Textile Design from Central Saint Martin’s College, London. Her curatorial and arts practice has been influenced by examining the effects of dispossession, displacement and settler colonial borders on Indigenous identities and collective sense of belonging.
Dameeli is deeply interested in how textiles can be both cultural critique and beautiful objects; she loves their constructed and sculptural abilities and produces three dimensional, scaled-up objects as well as everyday, interactive products like fabric and surface materials.