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NZ LGBTQI+ videos, articles, and links from around the web

Watch a documentary on voguing and FAFSWAG, listen to interviews with queer Kiwis, and dive into some excellent recent publications.

Video

Pre-colonial attitudes to sex and gender fluidity (The Spinoff)

Decolonising gender and sexuality in Wellington City (Re:)

Auckland’s Underground Vogue Scene, a 26-minute Vice documentary about South Auckland arts collective FAFSWAG (Vice)

Read a profile and watch a short film on transgender activist Bella Simpson (NZ History)

TV interview with Carmen Rupe on Tonight at Nine, 1975 (Te Ara)

Extract from Carmen, a 1989 documentary about Carmen Rupe (Ngā Taonga)

Audio

RNZ’s Jesse Mulligan on Ngā Taonga’s sound recordings of transgender culture in New Zealand media (RNZ)

Articles

Rifling through the Top Drawer: Looking through Grant Lingard (Auckland Art Gallery)

Welcoming two books that act as windows into queer life in Aotearoa (The Spinoff)

The new historic list celebrating the nation’s rainbow landmarks (The Spinoff)

Re:’s LGBTQIA+ hub of articles (Re:)

From the Margins: What the Archives Show Us About Trans Cinema and Audiences (The Criterion Collection)

‘We’re part of New Zealand’s Pacific story’ (E-Tangata)

‘Rainbow Election 2020 highlights LGBTQI+ issues – and a lack of policy’ (The Spinoff)

‘Auckland’s Vogue Balls Are a Church for Queers, And Everyone Else’ (Vice)

A collection of interviews from diverse members of the LGBTQI+ community in New Zealand (Pride NZ)

Books

Crossing the Lines (Otago University Press, 2020)

Queer x Design highlights 50 years of LGBT+ graphic design (Dezeen, 2019)

Queer Objects (Otago University Press, 2019)

Exhibitions around the world

Queer

National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia)

“Queer shines a light on the NGV Collection to examine and reveal the queer stories works of art can tell. The exhibition spans diverse media including painting, drawing, photography, decorative arts, fashion, video, sculpture, and design and explores queerness as an expression of sexuality and gender, a political movement, a sensibility, and as an attitude that defies fixed definition.”

You might also like

LGBTQI+ histories of Aotearoa New Zealand

Explore queer objects, artworks, and stories in Te Papa’s collections and discover more about the rich histories of Aotearoa New Zealand’s LGBTQI+ communities and icons – including the AIDS Quilt, Carmen Rupe, and Xena: Warrior Princess.

Trans Past, Trans Present: The Making Trans Histories Project

Trans people from their teens to their 70s were asked to identify objects of personal importance and to share the objects’ stories. What emerged was a quirky collection that is a testament to the diversity of trans experiences, and which disrupts established (and cis-written) narratives about trans lives.

Hidden Agender: The life of Eugenia Falleni, a woman who lived as a man in the 1890s

Lauren Lysaght’s mixed media work Hidden Agender is inspired by the life of Eugenia Falleni (about 1875–1938), a woman who presented herself as man in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and whose life was placed under the microscope in 1920 when she was charged with murder and ‘sex fraud’.