( They / He)

At Home Burial. 2025

Stop motion video. 2:16 mins.

At Home Burial is a 2:16-minute stop-motion film shot entirely on 35mm black-and-white film. It is a self-portrait grounded in performance and bodily experimentation, exploring my queerness within a cis-heteronormative domestic environment. Filmed in and around my childhood home in Palmerston North, the work investigates how space, memory, and learned behaviours shaped my perception of gender. Themes of discomfort, excavation, and inherited identity unfold as I use my body as a site of multiplicity, refusing a singular, fixed self. Drawing from my personal archive, the clothing off my parents’ backs, and the spaces we shared, I trace a symbiotic relationship between myself and my lineage. I become both nurturer and product of the ground I came from.

Eli Armstrong (b. 2005, Wellington NZ), is a visual artist based in Wellington, New Zealand.

Their practice explores queerness through both personal history and a broader, shared queer experience. They combine satire and critical reflection on queer narratives to better understand the historical contexts of queer representation in art and media. A key focus of their work is reimagining historical queer narratives through contemporary visual language, bridging the past with the present to examine how these histories continue to shape queer identities and spaces today. Eli aims to offer a counterpoint to mainstream representations of queer identity, challenging preconceived notions and contributing to a critical dialogue about the semiotics, narratives, and tropes that have historically come to define queerness.