Cuntaminated

A fashion concept shoot by artist George Funaki.

George Funaki is an artist, fashion designer and freelance creative director based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland whose work centres Aotearoa’s Pacific diaspora and LGBTQ+ communities as the rest of the zeitgeist scrambles to keep up with their ever-shifting expressions of cultural identity and gender. 

Cuntaminated reflects on origins and evolving vernaculars, specifically, the passage of cunt from misogynist slur to supreme praise among Black and Brown femme queens of the queer Ballroom scene, and from there to lesbian and feminist artists like Eileen Myles and Tracey Emin, and finally into the internet mainstream, where tweens serve cunt in their bathroom mirrors before dinner. 

As Funaki puts it: “To embrace cunt is to embrace delusion, hedonism and, paradoxically, kindness. It’s a space of contradiction, a blend of harsh realities and radical tenderness. I realise it can be perplexing, but so is the notion of love—another four-letter word, brimming with complexities. I work within a Kakala framework, a Pacific method rooted in the stages of gathering, preparing and sharing cultural knowledge. By integrating Kakala’s relational, cyclical approach with and against the structurednature of fashion research, I can explore and merge elements of material culture, migration and the Brown diaspora. The assembly of people is critical. This is both to practice an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach, and to offer reciprocity, as a Kakala way of working demands. Real inspiration, and perhaps, a real global fashion identity, emerges from local voices, where global influences amalgamatewith existing cultures and histories, and are themselves transformed: as a distinct visual language for fashion in Tāmaki.”

CREDITS: Co-directed by: George Funaki and Miriama Aoake
Graphics: Samuel Pan
Photographer: Christian Turner
Models: Jasmine Tuiā and Jacelyn Heta
Hair: Viviejne Polima
Makeup: Anna Mae Davies
Stylist: Shiloh Sagapolu
Production Assistants: Moniola Chinwendu, Starr Ratapu, Darian Serrano, Melody Huang, and Iman Freeman

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