twisting, turning, winding: takatāpui + queer objects

A selection of texts on artworks from the exhibition catalogue for twisting, turning, winding: takatāpui + queer objects at Objectspace, Aotearoa.

Yuki Kihara, A night to remember, 2021, framed photograph, seven plastic dolls, wooden stand, dimensions variable

Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist whose work seeks to challenge dominant and singular historical narratives by exploring the intersectionality between identity politics, decolonisation and the environment through visual arts, dance and curatorial practices. Kihara is the official Aotearoa representative at the 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.

Yuki Kihara, A night to remember (detail), 2021, framed photograph, seven plastic dolls, wooden stand, dimensions variable

“These dolls have been collected from thrift stores around Tāmaki Makaurau over the years, but they resemble one another, indicating they may have been produced by the same Hong Kong manufacturer. I have found similar dolls in souvenir stores in Honolulu, Hawai’i in 2017 and in Suva, Fiji in 2018 where the dolls serve as a racial stereotype of the local Indigenous people as part of the ongoing colonial tropes of paradise.

The dolls in my work, however, are repurposed and upcycled to memorialise a significant milestone in Sāmoa’s Fa’afafine his/her/ theirstory. Each doll is dressed in an evening gown worn by one of the 19 contestants in Sāmoa’s first Fa’afafine beauty pageant held at Tiafau Hotel, Apia in 1983, as seen in a black and white photograph taken by an unknown New Zealand photographer. The gowns were informed by the recollections of Freda Waterhouse, who participated as a contestant in the beauty pageant and speaks of the pageant as being a night to remember.

The Fa’afafine beauty pageant was held at a time when Fa’afafine were being arrested for wearing women’s attire in public and practicing homosexuality, based on Crime Ordinance 1961 which was introduced during the New Zealand colonial administration of Sāmoa between 1914 till 1962. While many Sāmoans joyously celebrated independence in 1962, the Fa’afafine community were left to fend for themselves against laws that specifically targeted their existence, an existence which dates back to pre-colonial times. The female impersonation law was abolished in 2013; however, homosexuality continues to remain illegal in Sāmoa.”

Sorawit Songsataya, Morning dew (detail), 2022, cast resin, heat-pressed and dried plant material, synthetic eyelashes, nails, 5 × 5 × 5 cm each

Sorawit Songsataya is a multimedia artist currently based in Ōtepoti Dunedin as the 2022 Frances Hodgkins Fellow. Their interdisciplinary work encompasses sculpture, ceramic, textile, moving-image and 3D animation. Acknowledging te ao Māori and Thai belief systems, Sorawit explores themes rooted in geological, ecological, and culturally significant histories to redefine our understanding of subjectivity and ecology. Recent exhibitions include Thinking Hands, Touching Each Other, The 6th Ural Industrial Biennial (2021), Heavy trees, arms and legs, an offsite exhibition for The Physics Room at The Suter Art Gallery, and Coastal Signs (2021) and The Turn of the Fifth Age, Taipei Contemporary Art Centre in collaboration with Selasar Sunaryo Art Space (2021).

This edition of Songsataya’s “Morning dew” sculpture stems from a body of work within their installation Offspring of Rain at Enjoy Contemporary Art Space (2019).

Sorawit Songsataya, Morning dew, 2022, cast resin, heat-pressed and dried plant material, synthetic eyelashes, nails, 5 × 5 × 5 cm each

“Offspring of Rain came from the idea that weather systems are not a singular, standalone phenomenon, but rather a set of complex, dynamic relations. The formation of dew drops relies on multiple factors and sets of conditions. Dew is the moisture that often forms at night as temperatures drop and objects cool down. This process is a result of condensation where water changing from a vapor to a liquid.

In the Māori creation story, dew is the tears of Ranginui, mourning his separation from Papatūānuku. I find it intriguing that we can find male and female roles in most creation stories (Thai, East Asian, Western, Māori) and the way gender is often assigned to the natural world in these stories. I wonder what is the significance of this and if there are ways that it could be approached differently.”

Peter Derksen, Shattered Cradle, 2020, ceramic, 30 × 60 × 40 cm

Peter Derksen is a queer artist and archivist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Working largely in abstract sculptural installation, his objects play with material trickery through transformative processes. He is currently working on a digitisation project at Te Tuhi in Pakuranga and is in his honour’s year at Elam School of Fine Arts Te Waka Tūhura at The University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau.

“Shattered Cradle was made as soon as we were let out after the second COVID lockdown in 2020. I was sexually frustrated from this isolation, which subconsciously manifested as a triple-set of alien gonads. Clay is so sensual, and the hours I spent caressing, forming, fondling the wet stuff was a relief after the isolation drought. Very Ghost, but I’m both Swayze and Demi Moore. When my perfect set of balls busted open in the kiln, it was a failure and a revelation, an accidental birthing. The shell had exploded, in what felt like the visual representation of a shitty year. But the material magic of the firing process sucked me in again, and I collected the shards of my aspirations and glazed/glammed them up. The environment of the kiln sheathed my balls in glittering glass armour. It had lost its surface definition and instead stole the surfaces from the spaces it inhabited. I spent hours just staring at it, embarrassed about my own narcissism—I’d been seduced by my own handiwork.”

Ahilapalapa Rands, Across the sea, 2022, mixed media installation, 150 × 150 × 60 cm

Ahilapalapa Rands (Kanaka Maoli, Fijian, Cook Island, Sāmoan, Pākehā) is a visual artist and co-founder of Moana Fresh, an online platform and physical storefront celebrating Māori and Pacific artists and makers. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology

Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau and a Diploma in Te Reo Māori from Te Wānanga o Raukawa in Ōtaki. Based in Whangārei, Rands makes work focussed on ways of communicating, educating and imagining decolonial futures that centre Indigenous worldviews. She is also a member of D.A.N.C.E. art club who have been working together since 2008 to expand definitions of what art is and who it is for.

In her installation Across the sea, Rands presents a wall hanging, embroidered with a tribute to canoe plants that don’t grow here in Aotearoa, flanked by two mai’a (banana) pups. In a Hawaiian worldview, plants are an intrinsic part of genealogy:

“In our whakaapa the kalo (taro) is our older sibling Haloa. Our many akua (deities) have kinolau (many bodies): plants, animals and environments are embodiments of the akua. Our people were oceanic gardeners who brought plants with them as they migrated across Oceania. How difficult it must have been, arriving here in such a different climate; crops like the banana, the large Hawaiian tī leaf and varieties of taro are quite fragile here, and coconut and breadfruit failed. What were those early years of rapid-fire innovation like? There is something here about home and bringing it with you, but also some things are left behind.”

Referencing embroidered family banners from her Scottish and Irish whakapapa, Rands’ banner honours her plant relatives in the place of ancestral names: “I love the rigid gaudiness of traditional banners, they’re kind of camp, with gold brocade and velvet. In the Kingdom of Hawaii (post contact), we created our own versions to adapt and keep pace with other nations. This material culture married well with our own knack for pageantry, and a distinct aesthetic was formed. In pre-contact times, queerness was an entrenched part of our culture; ’ai kane (same sex partners) and māhū (third gendered peoples with sacred roles) were integral to society. The concept ’aloha is not straight’, shared by Hawaiian activists like Jamaica Osorio and No’u Revilla, has influenced my thinking around sexuality, place, land and plants. Our aloha as Hawaiians has never been ‘straight’, it is birthed from our lands and oceans. In the garden, reconnecting to my plant relatives, all of us from across the sea, my queerness is at home.”

Fiona Amundsen, Stirling dressing in the blue bathroom, Westend Road, September 1995, 2021, silk charmeuse banner, 75 × 120 cm; Stirling getting ready, Westend Road, September 1995, 2021, silk charmeuse banner, 75 × 120 cm

Fiona Amundsen is an artist whose practice explores how documentary photographic and filmic images can enable a connected, active and caring relationship to the ramifications of painful historical experiences that live on in the present. She is interested in establishing relationships between specific historical events, the social responsibility of witnessing, and the ethics of documentary photographic and filmic practices.

Amundsen is committed to devising creative methods that can teach about humanity, histories and the processes required to care for each other and assume an ethically sacred responsibility for life and living.

Amundsen presents photographs taken in 1995, printed in 2021 as silk banners and featuring a person called Stirling as she is getting ready to go out.

“These images of Stirling were taken in a house on West end Road, which is where I was living at the time. We used to dress in suits and go to the Midnight Club, which was a lesbian bar. She—this was before the days of pronoun options—was much older than me. She really showed me how to live my queerness. She showed me a way of being when possibilities seemed quite limited. These images totally embody a queer life. They show us queer living.”

Reuben Paterson, One Nostril at a Time, 2022, Amyl bottles, glass, Perspex and card, dimensions variable

Reuben Paterson (Ngāti Rangitihi, Tūhourangi, Ngāi Tūhoe) is a dynamic artist known for his creations in glitter and diamond dust. The influence of Paterson’s Māori heritage is strong in his early works, which focused on kōwhaiwhai motifs. Drawing from both his Māori and Scottish ancestry Paterson combines traditional design with non-traditional media, reinvigorating and extending Māori expression. Paterson incorporates formal painting properties of sharp line and ornate detail with specially commissioned glitter colours to elicit curiosity and joy. Patterson’s practice often engages with queer culture. His 2011 temporary sex museum, Icecream and Muscles, was installed at Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland fashion store WORLD, where he presented sex toys shown alongside personal anecdotes from his community.

For twisting, turning, winding, Paterson presents a now restricted gay cultural artefact: poppers, a type of inhalant that contain alkyl nitrites, which cause muscle relaxation, allowing for more comfortable penetrative sex. Previously widely available, poppers were scheduled as a prescription only medication in March 2020, a decision that was met with disappointment and outrage from the queer community. Paterson sees One Nostril at a Time as an extension of his 2011 sex museum capsule collection for WORLDman. Later this year Paterson will present an installation, Bossy Bottle Kween, alongside two new glitter tees at WORLD stores nationwide.

Reuben Paterson, One Nostril at a Time, 2022, Amyl bottles, glass, Perspex and card, dimensions variable

“Poppers first found me, on the dance floor. My dearest friends have also shared how poppers have shaped their lives because poppers have allowed us to explore ourselves as sexual beings, less afraid to seek pleasure. Poppers are a companion to our history and are a cultural object for the pocket. Without any consultation they were taken from us—and they represent much more than just a bottle. Thank you to my friends for sharing your heartfelt and humorous, proud and adventurous memories of the emotions poppers provide us. I know there will be many more to come, one nostril at a time.”

Ana Iti, Gifted ventifact, date unknown, material unknown, 9 × 5.5 × 2.5 cm

Ana Iti (Te Rarawa) is an artist currently based in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Often employing sculpture, video and text, her recent work explores the practice of history making through shared and personal narratives. Iti has a Master of Fine Arts from Toi Rauwhārangi at Massey University Wellington Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, was a McCahon House resident
in 2020 and was recently named the 2022 recipient of the Grace Butler Memorial Foundation Award at Ara Institute of Canterbury. Recent exhibitions include Turning a page, starting a chapter at Gus Fisher Gallery (2022), Swallowing Geography at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (2021-22) and takoto / to lay down at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2020).

“A ventifact is a rock that has been formed by strong winds and sand. This ventifact was a gift from Ron Bronson when I was in Auckland doing a site visit for a project. I think it probably sat on his desk as a sort of curio. He kindly gave it to me, because these are things that I’m really interested in. Now it sits on my desk, and I look at it as I work.

In terms of the ventifact’s relationship to queerness, one of the interesting things about ventifacts is that people often mistake them for things that they’re not. Someone might find one on the beach and think it’s a sculpture made by human hands. Ventifacts have also been mistaken for asteroid fragments. But in fact, the ventifact is a strange and unique rock that has been created entirely by natural forces here on earth. They’re unusual, but they’re really special and I love them.”

Ary Jansen, The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks, 1984—2022 (ongoing), book, 18 × 11 × 1.8 cm

Ary Jansen is a Pākehā transgender artist, musician and youth worker from and living in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Queerness and storytelling weave through all aspects of his work and life. He is interested in identity and social structures, exploring these in his music and artwork and supporting others in his day job as a transgender peer support worker. His work has taken the form of multimedia video collage and installation, albums and EPs from various musical projects, events, and interactive performances.

For twisting, turning, winding, Jansen offers his copy of The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks (1984), given to him by his father as a teenager, which he says contained his first meaningful encounter with trans masculinity.

“I think he lent it to me because I was getting into dark and edgy things; British post punk and goth bands, dystopian science fiction books and movies. The main character is a violent and psychopathic teenager who has a deep hatred of women and femininity, which he attributes to some injustice is done to him as a child. There is a transgender twist at the end, which is extremely problematic, talking about medical and social transition against someone’s consent and knowledge.

My only other encounters with transgender characters had been fleeting, and they were always perpetrators or victims of horrific violence. When I was growing up, a lot of queer characters I saw were villains, a model of what to avoid, what you didn’t want to be when you grew up. If they weren’t villains, they were ‘model minorities’, like Ellen DeGeneres, or some of the characters in Glee. Those characters were far more off- putting to me — I related more to the villains. It is probably the same for a lot of queer people growing up. I also connected with Charlize Theron’s depiction of Aileen Wuornos in Monster. There is a clear connection between my interest in body horror and gender dysphoria. As a teenager, my body was a horror to me and I often felt violent towards it. I was infatuated with gore and body horror. To be queer, is to seek connection or find connection. Often that is in strange places, because you can’t find it anywhere else. That was the case for me in this book.”

Areez Katki, Might this be a self-portrait?, 2021, mahogany Arts & Crafts side table, upholstery of embroidered wool, glass 32 × 58 × 42 cm

Areez Katki’s (شابرگد/dēgarbash) practice explores queer terrain through writing, embroidery, weaving, painting and printmaking. Born into a migrant Parsi (Zoroastrian) family, Katki is based between Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa and his birthplace, Mumbai, India. His work addresses spirituality, postcolonial identity and sexuality, raising questions around social hegemonies. Katki’s work is held in public and private institutions across Aotearoa, North America, Europe and Asia. He is represented by Tim Melville Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, and Tarq Gallery in Mumbai, India.

Might this be a self-portrait? comprises a mahogany Arts & Crafts side table, balanced on two legs and its rim, with rose cross stitching on inlaid upholstery under a glazed top. Katki sees a queer narrative in this object, with its two legs and tabletop tilting at a 40-degree angle to the ground.

“That missing limb urges me to rethink how we approach function in craft and how we use our materials. Are we striving for functionality? Is ornament, however discreet, to be considered extraneous? Or, do objects that can be looked at, but not used, offer us an alternative way of understanding ourselves?

Extending from this, what happens when we emancipate our bodies from the pressures of performing according to dominant hetero norms and spaces? Can we open up a new space for us to exist, and tell our stories? This is the space that I feel excited about, and that can serve a deeper cultural purpose.”

Shaun Thomas McGill, Durham Street West Men’s Door, 2022, wood, enamel paint, 198 × 86 cm

Shaun Thomas McGill is a queer artist born in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and now based in Gadigal land Sydney. His work deals with the ethical representation of queer identity and histories, through painting, portraiture, floristry and installation. McGill is a graduate of Massey University Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa and Elam School of Fine Arts Te Waka Tūhura. McGill presents here Durham Street West Men’s Door, a cubicle door salvaged from a public bathroom and known cruising site which was demolished in 2020 to make way for the City Rail Link.

“Public cruising is often portrayed as deviant, but public toilets were spaces of intimacy and connection for queer men. Cruising was a response to a severely restricted and hostile society, particularly prior to the Homosexual Law Reform Act of 1986. In Auckland, there was a thriving network of such spaces which have since disappeared. Much of this history, closeted and anonymous by necessity, is unrecorded.”

Built in the late 19th century, the men’s convenience at Durham Street West was one of many such sites. “Despite its historical significance, this queer legacy was largely invisible, especially online. In early 2020 it was set to be destroyed without consultation with the queer community. We should have been acknowledged as stakeholders in the site’s social history, particularly given the council’s Rainbow Tick accreditation.”

Demolition was temporarily intercepted by McGill. An exhibition titled Durham Street West (Men’s Convenience), curated by James Tapsell- Kururangi at Papatūnga, gave the site’s queerness a Google-able footprint. McGill accompanied historian Martin Jones to photograph the location for the archive at Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, with a focus on examples of queer engagement with materials in the space. McGill also negotiated the salvaging of both toilet cubicle doors, facilitating the donation of the left door to Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira.

“This is the right cubicle door, the larger of the two. It easily fit two occupants and had a hand-washing sink, which the other cubicle did not have. The left cubicle door (now held at Auckland Museum) has evidence of peepholes. This queer practice of space transformation is not present in the right door, because gaps surrounding the lock and hinge, and punctures carved in the mortar of the concrete blocks, made peepholing unnecessary. This door is not the original, it dates to a council renovation in 1995. Regardless, the functions of the door represent an intangible heritage.”

Welby Ings, Posted death threat, 1985, cigarette packet, razor blade and cotton wool, soaked in fake blood, dimensions variable

Welby Ings is a film director, designer, author and professor of design at Auckland University of Technology Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau. Between the 1970s and the 1990s he was involved in publishing the New Zealand Gay News, working on homosexual law reform campaigns, activism surrounding the 1993 amendments to the human rights legislation and AIDS support and awareness.

“In 1985 during conflict leading up to the passing of the 1986 Homosexual Law Reform Act, I was part of public protests against Christian political activists. This resulted being filmed on television news items, being led out of public meetings that were closed by the police. At this time, I was living in Grey Lynn with my partner and we started receiving small anonymous packages through the mail. These were cigarette packets, often containing human excrement. While those ones were slung into

the roadside bin outside the Grey Lynn Post Office, this one I kept. I don’t think its blood. 37 years later, the colour on the cotton wool looks like cheap cochineal. The arrival of these packages was accompanied by late night phone calls where people shouted insults and bible verses down the phone at us. Fuck them!”

Jo Bragg, Quicksand, 2020, Pounamu, 92.5 pure silver, nickel silver chain, hot pink acrylic nail, Versace Ittierre blouse, white socks, dimensions variable

Co-founder of MEANWHILE artist run space, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland born and based Jo Bragg (Ngāti Porou) is a visual artist, writer and researcher making work informed by critical, social, and queer art theory. Bragg recently completed an MFA by Research (Hons) at Monash University in Naarm Australia and is a current collective member with RM Gallery and Project Space.

“Quicksand is a confluence of objects: a dark blue Versace blouse, a fake silver chain, a small pure piece of silver, a pink acrylic nail, a pair of white socks, and a large piece of pounamu, the scale that would comfortably sit in an outstretched palm. It is heavy, it is green.

Quicksand. The more you struggle to get out of it, the more it sucks you back in. That’s why I chose these items, in this configuration, in relation to a brief considering takatāpui queer objects. I looked around my room and picked these up, placed them in a pile and considered them. These objects either accidentally became mine after a breakup (so, on a technicality, some of them don’t belong to me), or they were given to me in a rather symbolic, aggrandised, dramatic way to literally represent love, by a past love, or from a family member. It’s sort of like an epitaph to people that are still alive. Past loves and family alike. I also appreciated the anthropomorphic aspect, the absence of a person as if they had melted, and the tension between the synthetic and natural, the detail of the fake silver alongside the pure silver. It’s a sad little love puddle, or portal if you prefer.”

twisting, turning, winding: takatāpui + queer objects runs at Objectspace through 21 August 2022.

RELATED READING