An Ethics of Witnessing

Drawing from Roberto Esposito’s theory of Immunitas, the exhibition critiques the societal urge to immunise or protect itself by way of exclusion, through institutions such as borders, prisons, and medical systems. These colonial systems of control determine who gets to participate in society and who doesn’t, whose lives are preserved and whose are disposable. The artists in An Ethics of Witnessing map systems that govern the body, who is grieved and who is forgotten. Witnessing becomes a political act, a practice of staying present with what institutions may hope to erase.

The ideas contemplated in An Ethics of Witnessing resonate with the histories of AIDS in Aotearoa. The works echo a whakapapa of care networks, activist resistance, and the cultural labour of remembrance in the face of stigma and neglect. An Ethics of Witnessing holds space for what is unfinished, and acts as a meditation on our histories. In this context, queerness is positioned as a relational force: a vital messiness grounded in the ethics of proximity.

Aroha Matchitt-Millar has drawn from their practice of skinning manu, research into manu pōria, jewellery adornment and their own body for Tīwaiwaka takamiri turuma, he tangata kaikino. In pre-colonial times, manu pōria were typically made from pounamu or bone and used to domesticate birds. For this series of pōria, Matchitt-Millar uses copper and silver to map and measure the orifices of their body, with two manu—native an non-native—suspended with muka between two tarps, one of which contains rotting harakeke and has a karakia composed by the artist painted on it by p Walters.

Frankie Matchitt-Millar’s works are a series of personal belongings installed at the artist’s height. Objects that have been worn, listened to, created, read and inhaled. Each contains a story of its own. Matchitt-Millar’s interests in toi and te ao Māori are reflected in their use of kōkowai and muka; on the bottom of old Adidas shoes and used to bind pages from their diary, respectively. Their headphones play a mix that includes Lorde, Travis Scott, and the Howard Morrison Quartet—a peek inside the mind of its owner.

p Walters’ paintings and drawings extend throughout the gallery. Pieces of scripture from the bible and excerpts from spiritualist books, pop culture references and parts of their research are rendered by the artist in red. For this exhibition, they are working in oil reduction and layering paint. Walters’ capitalised text can be read as a warning, an omen, a dare. Césaire at Ihumātao was used as a protest banner during the Hīkoi mo te Tiriti, while Red Dragon or Tarakona Whero is a kaitiaki, encapsulating p Walters’ practice; defiant and loving.

The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT] is a performance by Fetishini with Ys Blue, Chloe Jaques and Kat Lang. Each performer embodies a disintegrating bodily system: blood, liver and skin—organs not only represented but ruptured through gesture, material and sonic intensity dissolving the coherence of the body into pulsing, leaking, reverberating matter. Channelling the aesthetics of horror and drawing on the grotesqueness of bodily transformation and visceral performance, The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT] addresses ecological collapse using the metaphor of anatomical demise. Blood, liver and skin are rendered toxic and excessive, corrupted by the same forces that poison the earth.