ABOUT
born 1985 in Wellington (NZ), lives and works in Berlin
EDUCATION
2002 - 2006 BA, Honours Degree Performance Design, Massey University and Toi Whakaari, Wellington, NZ
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have long approached my creative practice as a way of examining social contexts and how they shape both my own identity and that of others. My work is driven by a preoccupation with the inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and microaggressions that influence how we move through the world and relate to one another. Rather than operating at a global scale, I focus on the intimate and relational spaces within the self, between individuals, and between individuals and their surrounding environments. I am interested in the quality of these spaces, and in the personal narratives, histories, socialization, and forms of preconditioning that shape the encounter between one human being and another.
My process consistently involves the manipulation of social signifiers—through repetition, isolation, or recontextualisation—as a way of rigorously questioning the validity of ingrained social beliefs. This inquiry is often situated within the context of media and technology, with an awareness that the frames through which we view ourselves and our surroundings shape how meaning is produced and understood. Central to my practice is the act of holding a mirror, a camera, a phone, a laptop, or an empty performance space up to my own life and the lives of those around me, using these tools to reflect, examine, and reframe lived experience.
As a queer, non-binary, polyamorous individual, the lives, stories, and narratives I am drawn to articulate are queer-lesbian ones. My work explores the experiences of fem-socialised individuals living within patriarchal structures, with particular attention to the intimate spaces that exist between fems, often behind closed doors. Through this focus, I seek to examine and question the assumed “building blocks” of Western society—from gender socialisation to the nuclear family—while imagining and expressing alternative forms of relation, care, and social organization.