Eilish Hazell is an emerging queer artist, performer and self taught tattooist practicing in Naarm, so- called “Melbourne”. Primarily, their work operates with the belief that tattooing is a transgressive and transformative experience with the subversive power to turn suffering and subjection into pleasure and excess. While the body becomes subject to social classification, Hazell uses body modification through performance as a means of deconstructing and re-inscribing identity. Since acting on the body allows for self-fashioning and self-narration in ways that oppose biological or sociological essentialism, Hazell explores the radical potential of tattooing as a means of personal queer liberation. They are interested in works of performance that facilitate an exchange of intimacy between performer and viewer, foster both physical and digital safe spaces and enable collective healing through acts of generosity and openness.

Their project is an exhaustive and continuous, macabre and masochist love letter, first and foremost to themselves but always also to you. They use photography, performance, poetry and tattooing as devices to disrupt hegemonic, cis-heteronormative, patriarchal notions of identity and desire. They consider their work as informed by both painful failures as well as intricate shared respect and care within relationship/s. The project is one of endurance and revolution that provides a window into the partnership/s that preface both sentimental and fleshly intimacy as a bolster of selfhood.