When you do not see your body, desire or sexuality represented, it is imperative that you represent it yourself, and as honestly and in as much of its complexity as you possibly can.

We Don’t Have to Be the Building was made to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Homosexual Law Reform, and looks at the past, present and future of queer female sexualities and activism.

The show features drawings and sculptures from We Don’t Have to Be the Building – as well as a new work, Intimacy Stages / Active Empathy, of which you can be a part!

Sian Torrington will be on site for a week, offering appointments in which she will draw whatever the participant offers. It might be your finger, arm, or dildo. The resultant assemblage of large-scale charcoal drawings of the people who visit will help to form a sense of what we want to show/conceal.

Through individual reflection, collaborative writing and art making, this show acknowledges the slippages, strangeness, and mass of embodied experience.

Sian invites lesbian, bisexual, queer, femme, butch, takatāpui wahine, trans*, and female identified people to participate in an embodied project on our sexuality.

Large-scale posters of We Don’t Have to Be the Building will also be popping up around town during Auckland Pride!