Can you see me?

Lonnie Hutchinson’s early practice is characterised by interventionist performances in public spaces. Comprising three poignant performances, in Can you see me?, 1997, Hutchinson’s body is covered in packaging tape while she lays motionless in public spaces around Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. In the first performance, she is suspended from a macrocarpa tree at Unitec Institute of Technology, while the second performance takes place at Queen Elizabeth II Square. In the final performance, the artist’s body was taped onto the Women’s Suffrage Centenary Memorial, painted by Jan Morrison and Claudia Pond Eyley in 1993 at Khartoum Place. The placement of her body within the painted history of women’s suffrage in this iteration highlights the absence of Indigenous women in both the memorial and in historical narratives.

– Ane Tonga, Curator, Pacific Art, 2022

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