Home isn’t always somewhere you can point to on a map. Sometimes it lives in your relationship with your mother, the rituals you grew up with and the generations before you. For writer and artist Doris Chang, based on Kaurna Country in Adelaide and the first Australian-born daughter of Hong Kong Chinese migrants, belonging has never been quite as simple as geography.

Growing up in a small town with little cultural diversity, Doris developed a complicated relationship with her Chinese heritage. Rather than searching for a single definition of home, she explores its many contradictions through poetry, personal essays, and meditative watercolour still lifes. Her work is self-referential, often intimate and unafraid to ask uncomfortable questions.

Having previously worked in picture book illustration and copywriting, Doris has increasingly found her voice in writing. Her self-published collection, Stranger, daughter, lover, friend, is a semi-autobiographical exploration of identity and the roles we inhabit. It’s a deeply personal undertaking from someone who understands that putting words into the world means making yourself vulnerable.

A self-described homebody and “curator of things”, Doris also has an eye for interiors, personal style and beautiful objects. Yet beneath these varied interests sits a fascination with what makes us who we are. Her work doesn’t insist on tidy answers. It makes room for the messier, more interesting questions.