PINK IS PUNK, CRAFTING IS RADICAL, AND NURTURING IS NOT REGRESSIVE. FEMININITY HAS DETACHED ITSELF FROM WOMANHOOD - ANYONE CAN, AND DOES, PARTICIPATE.
FEMININE PLAY DRAWS ON STEPHANIE HARKIN’S RESEARCH ON FEMININE GAMES AND PLAY CULTURES. FEMININE PLAY HAS BEEN OVERSHADOWED BY TRADITIONAL THINKING THAT PAIRS GAMES WITH BOYHOOD, COMPETITION AND VIOLENCE.
CURATED WORKS FOR THIS EXHIBITION REIMAGINE GAMES AND PLAY. IT ACCOUNTS FOR THE FEMININE EXPERIENCES AND PERSPECTIVES THAT HAVE GONE UNNOTICED.
THIS EXHIBITION FEATURES THOUGHTFUL GAMES, ARCHIVAL MATERIALS FROM THE NFSA AND ACMI, AND PLAYFUL CREATIVE WORKS FROM AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND. VISITORS TO THE SPACE ARE INVITED INTO A MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE AROUND GENDER, CULTURE, AND GAMES.
FEMININE PLAY IS PROGRAMMED AS PART OF THE 2024 MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL GAMES WEEK.
Song Animals
Myshkin Entertainment
An in-development game where players clean up a Swahili Coast island as a young girl named Nia.
An installation artwork centered on anti-feminist discourse from 4chan.
Based on Japanese decorative stitching, this game uses a custom sewing circuit board.
Nhu Bui and Lucian Rodriguez Lovell
Helen Kwok, Tabitha Leimonis & Caitlin Hopwood
An AR game reimagining the Vietnamese tradition of making sticky rice cakes.
A hand-drawn adventure puzzle game featuring genderless creatures on a musical quest.
A VR ghost-hunting game set in an abandoned horse girl's bedroom, exploring grief and loss.
ARCH REBELS
CODE (RMIT)
A game paying homage to feminine PC builders, challenging masculine tech culture.
Lucernal
A coming-of-age story about 13-year-old Isobel navigating civil unrest in a colonially occupied town.
STEMtoto Studio
ALT LITE, ALT RIGHT, B, A, START.
Lexi Karpathios
Letters to Arralla
Little Pink Clouds
A whimsical game set on an island with anthropomorphised fruit and veggie villagers.
Funny Fintan Softworks
A fast-paced first-person shooter with flashy visuals and a "girliepop" soundtrack.
A game celebrating fanfiction writing, acknowledging its often feminine nature.
Nhu Bui and Lucian Rodriguez Lovell
Helen Kwok
A memory card game about connecting lost moons to planets.
Meet the Team
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Stephanie Harkin
Lead Curator
Stephanie is a Lecturer in RMIT University’s School of Design Games Program where she researches girls’ online cultures and feminine gaming histories. Her research philosophy is steered towards accounting for the unaccounted.
She has written for GamesHub and Creative Victoria and is a board member of DiGRA Australia. She is author of the forthcoming book ‘Girlhood Games: Gender, Identity, and Coming of Age in Videogames.’
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Xavier Ho
Co-Curator
Xavier is a design researcher focusing on the queer independent games community. He is a Lecturer in Interaction Design at Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA).
In 2023 he led Pride at Play, the queer games exhibition awarded the Good Design Award for Social Impact. Xavier received the inaugural CSIRO Medal for Diversity and Inclusion for raising awareness of LGBTQIA+ communities in the organisation.
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Jini Maxwell
Co-Curator
Jini is a curator and an award-winning videogame journalist. They work at ACMI, Australia’s museum of screen culture, where they recently curated Out of Bounds: Exploring The Limits of Videogames and Honk! Untitled Goose Game Exhibition.
Jini works as lead curator on ACMI’s centrepiece exhibition, the Story of the Moving Image, works on games exhibitions in the gallery, and commissions work for ACMI’s digital gallery.
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Mahli-Ann Butt
Co-Curator
Mahli-Ann is a Lecturer in Culture and Communications at the University of Melbourne. She is spearheading the new cross-faculty collective research group MAGPIE: Melbourne Academic Games, Play, and Interactive Entertainment.
Mahli-Ann is the lead editor on the forthcoming book collection "The Post-Gamer Turn" which builds off her research on gaming cultures.