The Craft (his & hers)

Set within the historic context of Nairn Cottage, Matt Tini's The Craft (his & hers) (2026) responds to the enduring legacies of colonialism and the ways colonial notions of gender continue to haunt contemporary experiences of self. Through imagined ghostly figures, the artwork explores gender as something crafted, performed, and continually fashioned through acts of dress, personal care, and everyday ritual.

Viewers are witness to intimate moments of self-making, invited to reflect on how identity is shaped through the visual signifiers and social performances of gender. Using his own body as the subject, Matt inhabits and unsettles these inherited narratives, disrupting rigid binaries and challenging reductive understandings of gender and identity. By bringing together histories of place, performance, and personal ritual, the work reveals the lingering presence of colonial ideologies while opening space for more expansive and fluid expressions of self.

Curated by CIRCUIT for City Gallery Wellington as part of the installation Unsettling Nairn St., The Craft (his & hers) will be on view from 8pm, 31 October - 14 March 2026.

In Unsettling Nairn Street, seven artists engage with the historic site; its materiality and the layered narratives embedded within the cottage and the whenua on which it stands. From a nursery inspired by the 1860s, where fragments of early wallpaper survive, to a kitchen evoking the 1970s, the artists stir up the past, inviting visitors to experience Nairn Street Cottage and the stories and histories it represents anew.