ARTIST BIO
Pronouns: They / Them
Ethan Kristy is a multidisciplinary Queer Blak+ Trans visual activist based on Wadawurrung Country. Their practice bridges traditional art-making with photography, digital media, virtual platforms, and emerging technologies, including 3D modelling, 3D printing, and digital scanning.
Driven by activism and lived experience, Ethan’s work explores what it means to exist as a Queer Blak +Trans person in contemporary Australia. Through photography and expanded studio practice, they engage with Australian customs, social landscapes, and cultural symbolism to illuminate the everyday realities of queer lives.
Their work interrogates dominant understandings of gender, sexuality, identity, and belonging, challenging systemic bias, institutionalised discrimination, colonial frameworks, and the limitations of normative identity systems.
Ethan is currently completing a Master of Teaching at FedUni. They previously graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) specialising in Expanded Studio Practice and Photography, and in July 2024 completed a Master of Photography.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have walked many miles to become the person I am today. I embrace the richness and complexity of my lived experience – as a woman, a lesbian, a transgender man, and a gay individual. Today, I identify as a queer masculine-presenting, gender-nonconforming person who no longer feels bound by the gender binary.
While I present as male and was assigned female at birth, I no longer feel compelled to perform masculinity, femininity, or queerness through society’s expectations. Instead, I move through the world authentically as “Self-Made.”
Art has always been my voice – a way to navigate the world, process lived experience, and advocate for visibility and awareness. My practice draws upon my body, personal histories, and experiences within Australia to challenge viewers’ understandings of gender, sexuality, identity, culture, and belonging.
Rather than offering fixed answers, my work invites dialogue – creating space for conversation between the viewer, the artwork, and the lived realities embedded within it.
#anti-labels #anti-erasure #anti-norm
Further Information:
C.V.
Portfolio