Kōrero Toi #1

ARTS | ISSUE ONE | TUAKIRI / IDENTITY

Written by Natasha Munro Hurn she/they |  @utopia_for_sale | Contributing Writer

I crave distortion because it heals me. I am a personal riot, even at times when I desire not to, but then again, I am in a hetero world after all. No one can shut off this queerness because this is my utopia. I am broke as fuck but beautiful and alive!!!

My practice is best seen as both an embrace and a release of my experience as a queer non-binary trans woman in Aotearoa. Through hectic experimentation with digital photography, screen printing, and sculpture, I try to embody a personal celebration for both myself and queer bodies. In a way, I am protesting the ever-growing presence of violence that is placed upon us, gender non-conforming queers, both in common life and in our government institutions, backed by the far right. I seek to create techniques that may heal me from this colonial heteronormative world through revealing the euphoric sides of this queer life. Yet since this is my brain, what heals me relates to my experiences of falling in love with punk’s distortions of untrained sonics and utopian anarchism. It is through “full-on” harsh art that I am able to process and build upon myself, as queer euphoria is produced in the distortion. A lot of my art follows a sense of finding beauty in harshness that helps me process difficult emotions or past experiences. Mess is everything to me, especially when it comes to my collages or screen prints, because it is a pure, unapologetic release of my queer existence. Cherishing mess helps me deconstruct gender in whatever beautiful form or mutation I like. 

Under all the experimental trans-anarchist/ proud bimbo loudness of my practice is a thesis of chasing queer utopia. I see utopia as a major part of the queer experience because, to me, it is found in personal community and the vast avenues of self-expression. It is in communal space or found family that we find the safety to explore ourselves and celebrate the others who desire to do the same. Then, in the possibilities of expression, such as art, music, and thrifted fashion, one can find the soul of oneself in the exciting realms beyond this often rough one. So my work in reflection of all its emotional releases is to situate it under the importance of queer utopianism. I hope different queers in the wider communities can empathise with and find joy in my work as a party for them. It is at the party that utopia is euphorically present as a space for you and your family to let loose. 

And all of y’all are invited because we all need a bloody party in these times for us!