about

thanks for dropping by. i’m on a bit of a journey of reclaiming creativity rather than “productivity”¹. to do this i’ve been adopting some kupu from te reo Māori. mahi. creative mahi; something i commit to, that drives me, but which is not work.

you can learn more about me on my profile site but the bio there renders me part of a world i have been abused by and rejected from. instead, i hope my works here speak for themselves.

the who

as for my positionality, i am an urbanised Aboriginal person, a descendant of colonial destruction of relationality from (western) Arrernte and Pashtun descent, as well as being part of the destructive kaupapa’s origin nations as a descendant of scottish, german, and cornish ancestries who invaded, or were displaced into, this place. but there is nuance to this too, enclosure and colonialism share a bloodline; and capitalism dominates all epistemologies now. we’re in this ride together.

i identify as queer (bisexual, genderfluid). i am diagnosed neurodivergent. i live with two diagnosed chronic illnesses (PTSD and fibromyalgia).

but what does all this really tell you about me? very little. it might tick some diversity markers on a form, and if you’re on the lookout to do that before you engage someone’s creative mahi then there is more thinking to be done².

me

i was given the name Aidan by my parents. i carried two surnames, each for a grandfather. this quietly erases my maternal lines and the names and stories they carry. still, this is not a space in which we can truly share a yarn and work out our commons³. now i carry different names, you’ll find them if you look at my profile site, or just over there in the top left, only one of these is a story for today, the other is a story for tōku wahine.

Arlewatyerre is an adopted name. Elders of several countries of significance to my whakapapa have told me to follow goanna law/lore, and this has treated me well⁴. it also inspires some of my artworks and styles, so that’s the title.

the what

anyhow, this is a place to share mahi that i hope provokes thought, or makes you wonder what (the living hell) i was thinking or feeling when it happened. i hope you’ll enjoy this, or at least become otherwise puzzled by it.

big love and gratitude to those who came before, and those here with us now.

Footnotes

1. in pragmatic terms that means this blog may go days or weeks without updates, don’t worry, i won’t forget about you. ↩

2. i don’t mean this to be disparaging, but to judge someone’s corpus on the identity markers they or you can ‘see’ is still just racism, sexism, and classism dressed for show. ↩

3. to be clear i’m open to a good yarn, so hit up ursa for contacts - honestly. ↩

4. since as young as 3 and a half i have been drawn to lizards, and at 4 i drew a goanna with an Aunty which shaped my thinking for decades. those that care to look deeply see goanna as totemic for me, and i value their (6+) reads of this. ↩