MATT TINI
New ZealandPōneke-based artist Matt Tini (Waikato, Ngaati Tiipa, Ngāti Rakaipaaka, Ngāti Kahungunu) is an early career artist and recent Masters of Fine Arts graduate from Massey University Wellington.
In ‘untitled nudes’, Tini appropriates artworks by Western Orientalist painters such as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and François Boucher and positions his fair-skinned, Maaori, male, and Queer body against the exotic female nude. These photographs were taken with a mobile phone camera during the 2020 lockdown in the back room of his parents’ house. In contrast to the studio portraits, these coloured photographs are playful, grainy and over-exposed in areas.
Text courtesy Jhana Millers
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