Adornment, Scent, and Indigiqueer Presence

 This installation brings together adornment, scent, and the body as sites of Indigenous authorship and encounter. A diptych by Amber-Jayne Bain presents chest pieces by Los Colores de la Tierra activated on the body, where jade, clay beads, and woven elements move with breath and posture rather than remaining fixed as objects. On a nearby plinth, another Los Colores de la Tierra piece, a handwoven hairband from Aguacatán, Guatemala, and clay beadwork, forms the base for Stevei Houkāmau’s Hawaiki Roa (2025). Its spiked, ocean-oriented form echoes shark teeth, armour, and exposure, holding tension between protection and vulnerability.

Commissioned specifically for this exhibition, Nathan’s Kuskatan to Aotearoa Parfum (Edition 1/1) extends these material dialogues into scent. Built around Kuskatan balsam from El Salvador, long misnamed by colonial trade, the perfume brings resins, woods, and oils from Kuskatan and Aotearoa into relation. Hand-assembled in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, scent becomes an embodied archive of movement, labour, and intimacy, binding land, body, and exchange without containment.