Matt Tini

Ko wai koe? 
Ko Matt Tini tōku ingoa. He uri ahau nō Tainui me Tākitimu waka. 
 
What are your pronouns? 
He/they 
 
Where are you living right now? 
I live in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, at the base of Pukeahu maunga and alongside the Waitangi Awa that flows underground in pipes. 
 
What do you do and why do you do it? 
I make art because I’m a haututu and can’t keep my hands still. I’m compelled to make things, sometimes for myself and sometimes to share with others. I love yapping and I think of making and sharing with others as yapping in a different form. I mostly make using the lens (photography and video) as I feel compelled to reclaim and speak back to its colonising histories. I also make with native and ancestral fibres like harakeke, aute and whenua. These materials keep me grounded to the land and my whakapapa. 
I’m also a lecturer which allows me to research through making and yap about art. 
 
What are you working on at the moment? 
I’m making harakeke paper and printing images on it using alternative photography processes using materials from te taiao. I’m then turning these images into an animated video work. 
 
What is your earliest memory in an art gallery? 
My family are not that interested in art hahah so I didn’t grow up going to art galleries. The closest thing to one would have been a museum. So my first real experience with an art gallery was City Gallery in 2017 when I first started art school. The show was a Cindy Sherman exhibition that was so overwhelming and kind of a hectic experience. It was a lot of clowns. (I love Cindy now tho). 
 
Do you listen to music when making? Who is your favourite musician right now? 
I listen to a lot of music and it always changes depending on my mood. I will die for Doechii but Olivia Dean has been my Summer indulgence heheheh. I’ve also been spamming the latest album by Rosalía. 
 
Is there an artwork that changed the way you view the world? 
A specific artwork would be Lisa Reihana’s in Pursuit of Venus [infected] which was a huge positive influence to my practice. Also the works of Orientalist painters like Boucher, Ingres, Delacroix, Gérôme – even Gauguin whose work I situate alongside theirs. I’m not usually one to kink shame but the ways they fetishise brown, Indigenous bodies is so ridiculous to me I can’t help but mock them.  
 
If you had one wish for the art world, what would it be? 
A Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa biennale. One that spans our waters and islands and shows off what we Moana peoples do. I’m lowkey over Europe being the pinnacle of the art world and want people to be jealous of the Pacific lol.