I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I live and practice. I pay my respects to Elders – past, present, and emerging.

Mark Kleine illustrates, interrogates, and celebrates the multifaceted nature of identity. Kleine’s practice speaks to their lived experience as a mestizo – a person of ‘mixed’ Filipino descent. This is expressed through performance, photography, and video narratives that depict Kleine in a variety of guises. Kleine hopes that these efforts will allow us to recognise the capacity of identities to break away from limiting frameworks.

Kleine’s identity as a mestizo drives their interest in identities considered liminal, fluid, or ‘in-between’. The stories that Kleine tells express fluidity – characters interact with settings, clothing, and other emblems of cultural significance in ways that may question our static perceptions of them. This includes combining material that speaks to Kleine’s ‘mixed’ heritage, colonial legacies, and LGBTQIA+ cultures to encourage new stories while enriching more traditional narratives. This appreciates the importance of evolving perspectives about people.

In 2013, Kleine completed a degree in Fine Arts at the Queensland University of Technology and has since shown in exhibitions locally and abroad. This has included the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in South Korea, Performance Space in Sydney, and Shiro Oni Studio in Japan. In 2022, Kleine’s solo exhibition Domina was awarded a grant for developmental purposes by Queensland’s Regional Arts Development Fund.

Kleine is currently based on Yagara and Yugambeh land (Logan City) located south of Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia. Kleine practices art while studying and working in community legal centres.