To defy impermanence is to sit with the knowledge that everything will eventually disappear. The exhibition 'What Remains', creates a space to reflect on the idea of keeping even though it will eventually disappear. Artists Cass Li and Cristelle Cabrera explore the desire to preserve memory, identity and personal history through ceramics, video and photography. Responding to the deeply human impulse to collect, document and keep, both artists create archives of their lived experiences. Cass draws on writing and documentation to uncover personal truths embedded within familial objects and rituals, while Cristelle captures fragments of memory and identity through an intimate ceramic practice, creating forms that honour the people who have shaped her life. Together, their works invite reflection on what we choose to hold onto, and what remains when all else fades.
Curated by Jessica Montecinos
This project is supported by Create NSW.
Image Credits: Cass Li, aunties sending money (2024), digital photograph.
About the artists
Cristelle Cabrera is a Peruvian Australian artist who weaves memory, identity, and belonging through her ceramics. Each vessel becomes a fragment of ancestry – stories pressed into clay, echoing migration and resilience. Cabrera transforms her work into a complex relationship with her cultural identity, creating a raw representation of her constant anxiety around belonging while carrying the realities of hardship through spiritual acceptance. Her process combines slow, hand-built techniques with ritualistic repetition, making both labour and storytelling central to her practice.
Cabrera was selected as a finalist for the Burwood Art Prize in 2024, 2025 and 2026. She has also exhibited at Starla Gallery in Western Australia, Good Space Gallery in Chippendale and NAS Gallery in Darlinghurst. She is currently undertaking her Honours degree at the National Art School, with the support of the Max Baxter Scholarship.
Image credits: @lennybarnes
Cass Li is an emerging artist and arts worker with a creative documentary practice from Western Sydney. Working across non-fiction writing, video and photography, she is interested in the representation of personal and diasporic narratives through self-documentation and autoethnography. Her essayistic work often draws on her Chinese Timorese-Indonesian heritage and seeks connection in present and ancestral realities, tracing the moving boundaries of insider/outsider across time, place, and memory.
Cass has developed work as a CuriousWorks’ Future Culture artist in residence, WritingNSW Cultivate mentee and National Young Writers’ Festival artist. She has recently exhibited at photo access and Pari, and run workshops for Accessible Arts and Emerging Writers’ Festival.