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

Mark Kleine celebrates the multifaceted nature of identity. Their practice speaks to 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’s identity as a mestizo drives their interest in experiences that are liminal, fluid, or ‘in-between’. The stories that Kleine tells express fluidity – characters interact with settings, clothing, and other things that hold significance in ways that question our static perceptions of them. This involves material that speaks to Kleine’s ‘mixed’ heritage, LGBTQ+ communities, and other experiences to encourage new stories while enriching traditional narratives. This appreciates the importance of evolving perspectives about who we are and the capacity of our identities to break away from limiting frameworks.

In 2013, Kleine graduated with 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 received a grant from Queensland’s Regional Arts Development Fund to develop their solo exhibition Domina.

Kleine lives and works on Yagara and Yugambeh land (Logan City) near Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia.