An Ethics of Witnessing
Graphic designed by Joe Locke.
upcoming
5 Jul
–
16 Aug
Aroha Matchitt-Millar, Fetishini, Frankie Matchitt-Millar, p Walters
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.
Event
The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT]
Enjoy presents The Ethics of Witnessing [ROT] a one night only performance by Fetishini with Ys Blue, Chloe Jaques and Kat Lang.
More infoABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Fetishini is a queer, non-binary performance artist whose work navigates the borders of abjection, desire, and identity. Rooted in lived experiences of dysphoria, neurodivergence, and queer embodiment, their practice explores how we define ourselves by rejecting what is considered dirty, shameful, taboo, or threatening to bodily and psychic coherence.
Beginning their creative journey as a drag artist, Fetishini’s work has evolved into performance that entangles body horror, fetish, and emotional intensity. Navigating the slippery terrain where desire and revulsion coexist, Fetishini confronts sanitised cultural narratives about bodily coherence and identity.
Their performances are ritualistic encounters with what we are meant to disown—staging intimacy with shame, fetish, body horror, and emotional excess. In doing so, they offer a kind of exposure therapy through art: not to cure, but to coexist with what we are told to hide.
Aroha Matchitt-Millar (Ngāti Rangitihi, Te Whakatōhea, Tūhoe) is a multidisciplinary artist with strong foundations in contemporary jewellery and raranga. Her work is influenced by the practices her tīpuna used, intrinsically passed down through whakapapa.
Using feathers, feet, wings, and bones, Aroha creates contemporary jewellery, influenced by urban Māori 'Hori Chic' style. The intimacy of the process of skinning and pelting manu is both cathartic and repairing, recognizing the role colonisation had in separating Māori from these taonga while whatu-ing the strands of whakapapa back together. Her mahi is a rats tail reclamation to climb te ara a Whaititiri and have a cuppa with her nan.
Frankie Matchitt-Millar is a multidisciplinary artist based in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara. Through his work Matchitt-Millar explores his takatāpuhitanga alongside his Māoritanga, through embodied making. Connection to audience is an integral part of Matchitt-Millar’s making; reindigenising the realm of performance and creating accessible mahi to his community.
p Walters is a taniwha, local to the Kingdom of South Auckland and beyond, with wings and bones stretching across from Aotearoa and to various islands of Tonga. Their work reflects their dissidence to the colonial imagination and legacy of “new zealand” and their devotion to venerating their queer & othered body.
Graduating with BFA First Class Honours in 2022 from Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, they practice collectively & individually throughout the motu & Moana via curation, exhibition making, public programming, writing, connecting, and more.