An ethics of witnessing

Chapter yhree: an ethics of witnessing brings together the work of Fetishini, Aroha and Frankie Matchitt-Millar, and p Walters. These four practices trace the uneven terrain of collective and personal trauma, where legacies of colonisation and environmental violence persist. Here, the body, the whenua, and memory merge as sites of resistance, and being in relation is positioned as a method for survival.

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’s background in contemporary jewellery and raranga have built the foundation upon which Tīwaiwaka takamiri turuma, he tangata kaikino stands. The artist’s mahi is an exploration of what it means to be an urban Māori—stuck in the city but “needing to work in te taiao.”¹

One tarp representing Ranginui descends from the ceiling, as a second symbolising Papatūānuku sits on the floor, embracing the rotting harakeke within. Suspended from Rangi is muka stripped from the same harakeke and painted atop Papa by p Walters is a karakia composed by Matchitt-Millar. The gallery, with its concrete ceiling, floor, and fluorescent lighting, is our urban te ao Mārama. Held in the space between ngā atua is the deconstructed body of the artist.

In this installation, sensuality is implicit rather than explicit. Matchitt-Millar has researched pre-colonial manu pōria, an adornment often made from pounamu or bone that was placed around the feet of captive manu in order to domesticate them. Here, manu pōria are reimagined in copper and silver. They hang from muka, arranged in accordance with the artist’s own body as if she were laying down in the space. Like these manu pōria, the bodies of wāhine Māori have had to adapt over time. Overt sexuality, once celebrated, became repressed as Aotearoa was colonised. The display of various orifices of the artist’s body are a step towards honouring the importance of wāhine Māori bodies—sensuality that is innate even in absence.

The bodies of two manu—endemic and introduced—are also included in the installation. A tīwaiwaka and a song thrush have been pelted and skinned by Matchitt-Millar, who acknowledges each manu as a gift while also lamenting the vastly different relationship she has with them than her tīpuna would have had with the manu they cared for. There is tension with arguments made by Robert Esposito in Immunitas, who states that “if the body is the privileged locus for the unfolding of life, it is also the place where the presence of death is most noticeable…The fact is, death and the body do not go together for very long. Their encounter is only momentary: once dead, the body does not endure.”²

It is true that Matchitt-Millar espouses life and death in her mahi toi; however, the bodies in Tīwaiwaka takamiri turuma, he tangata kaikino—Ranginui, Papatūānuku, the artist themself, tīwaiwaka and song thrush—do endure, through preservation and memory.