Riana Head-Toussaint

Riana Head-Toussaint is an interdisciplinary crip/disabled artist of Afro Caribbean heritage. She frequently straddles multiple roles across her projects; employing choreography, performance, film, sound design and immersive installation to create works that interrogate entrenched systems, structures and ways of thinking; and advocate for social change.

Her practice sits at the intersection of creative expression, activism, cultural exchange and disability justice, and is deeply informed by her movement language and embodied-experience as a wheelchair-user, and her training as a legal practitioner. Riana’s practice also involves significant, broader curatorial/space-making projects, aimed at increasing creative opportunities and fostering connection between traditionally sidelined and marginalised communities. She is the founder of CRIP RAVE THEORY, a club night outside the club fostering more intersectionally-accessible rave spaces. She is a DJ (Aquenta) and Solicitor, and has worked in various investigative, policymaking and executive/research positions at the Australian Human Rights Commission and beyond. Her work has won awards and exhibited widely across so-called Australia and virtual spaces, and she has hosted and participated in numerous talks, workshops and panels surrounding art, culture and disability.