Mia Salsjö

hen pondering the form of opera, the collective imagination conjures resplendent images of a chorus dressed in gold tassels, and vast crinoline vitrines enveloping a soprano soloist who is a third of their size. However, this is a depiction arising from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and pre-WWII twentieth centuries. Contemporary music has since explored new territories, opening its limits to voices that were once marginalised – including to women and to non-Western practices. It has expanded across disciplines and sonically plastered itself in the in-between spaces of the weird and unexpected. It is from this brilliantly undefined region of experimentation and interdisciplinary practice that Melbourne-based artist Mia Salsjö