Pride '09: Art celebrates gender diversity

Posted in: New Zealand Daily News
By GayNZ.com Daily News Staff - 22nd January 2009

An art exhibition opening in Auckland tomorrow for the Pride '09 Festival will reveal the extraordinary and ordinary worlds of individuals who define themselves as "gender uncertain" or "gender fluid".

Mark, boy/girl: A photo by Rebecca Swann

Assume Nothing features twenty-three provocative images by photographer Rebecca Swann, eight animated portraits and a documentary by award-winning film maker Kirsty McDonald at MIC Toi Rerehiko on K' Road.

"The exhibition reveals the extraordinary and ordinary worlds of individuals who define themselves as transgender, FtM's, MtF's, cross dressers, intersex activists, drag queens, drag kings, gender fluid, fa'afafine, whakawahine, sista girls, feminine men, or masculine women," explains Swann.

Among those featured in the exhibition are high-profile transgender New Zealanders Carmen Rupe and Georgina Bayer, intersex activist and spokesperson Mani Bruce Mitchell, and artists Shigeyuki Kihara and Ema Lyon from Pacific Sisters.

First exhibited in Lower Hutt last year, Assume Nothing is on tour around New Zealand until 2010.

To accompany the exhibition, three free workshops presented by the Human Rights Commission and trans people will also be held at the gallery on Friday 30 and Saturday 31 January.

Assume Nothing opens tomorrow evening 23 January, and runs until Thursday 19 February at MIC Toi Rerehiko, Level 1, 321 Karangahape Road. More details about the exhibition and transgender workshops are on the link below.