For emerging Brisbane printmaker Ruth Cho, art cuts both ways: it helps us reframe the past and understand who we are – and who we want to be – today. Cho’s prints are striking hybrids of iconic Australian and East-Asian imagery, often featuring wildlife that holds particular cultural significance. In her 2018 series Year of the Pest, she combines Western engraving and Chinese papercutting to depict iconic native animals; in her 2021 series Australian Knockoffs, she recasts classic Australian paintings to challenge outdated, Eurocentric ideas of national identity. Cho talked to Griffith Review about pests, postcolonialism and the art of printmaking.

CARODY CULVER: Tell us about your art practice – what drew you to linocut printing?