By Amy Weng

Miss Changy's breakfast event, part of Satellites 2017, served up Kaya toast, Kopi and eggs to the hungry masses. Photo by Julie Zhu

In Conversation with Ruby White aka Miss Changy

AMY WENG | Ruby White will be familiar to many as the creative mastermind behind Miss Changy, a food-as-art project that has recently brought some of the most exciting pop-up culinary experiences in Tāmaki Auckland. Amy Weng spoke to White about her practice, subverting the Ford assembly line, and the art and politics of food…

Vanessa Crofskey, performance artist and spoken word poet, at Noodle House on Great North Road. Photo by Megan Blennerhassett

Food to nourish the soul at Tasting Words

On your left as you come up Great North Rd, just before Titirangi Rd going west, there is a cluster of restaurants serving great food – noodle houses, dumpling joints, a kebab shop. There’s also a dairy, a barbers, a vape store, a locksmith, Woottons Auto Accessories and two kinds of tool stores. This strip…

Han Huang, in Asian Men Talk About Sex

Asian Men Talk About Sex: The director’s cut with Chye-Ling Huang

AMY WENG | Asian Men Talk About Sex is three women’s mission; to challenge the mainstream media’s portrayal of ‘sexy’ by asking every-day Asian men in New Zealand to talk about their sex lives. Director Chye-Ling Huang spoke to Amy Weng about the challenges involved in creating the documentary, and what she hopes the film will help us to understand…

Artist John Young Zerunge. Image courtesy of John Young Studio

In conversation with John Young Zerunge

AMY WENG | John Young Zerunge is an Australian-Chinese artist and one of the co-founders and founding president of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art in Sydney. An initiative formed by the Asian Australian Artists’ Association in 1996, 4A has become a leading art institution in Australia, encouraging dialogue on Asian and Australian cultural relations, and…

Te Tiriti o Waitangi – an unmet challenge

AMY WENG | In trying to trace a collective history, I’ve come to the realisation that ours is a lot more incidental- filled with stops and starts- a non-linear digression through over a century and a half of co-habitation, but not necessarily of occupation. Where Asian New Zealanders have a stake in the political and public…

In conversation with Vera Mey

AMY WENG | Vera Mey is an independent curator. The following is a except of a conversation between Mey and HAINAMANA editor Amy Weng. Here, they talk umbrella identities and redefining a position of alterity…

Notes from the third space

Notes towards a third space: On a prevailing easterly wind

AMY WENG | In 1992, on the corner of Wellesley and Kitchener Street, on the southern facade of what was then the Old Art Gallery, a lighted window containing an ink painted backdrop and elongated rosary was installed. Four calligraphic characters were painted on its face, and this window changed- illuminating and dimming according to the hour of the day…