Kaiya Waerea (Ngāti Kahungunu) is an artist, writer, and publisher from Aotearoa, who has lived in London for 11 years. His research is interested in the diasporic qualities of print, and how the distributive flow and material persistence of print outputs enable intimacy and insurgency through time and across borders.
Most recently, this has resulted in the first iteration of Rūma Panui Totoro ꩜ A Reaching Reading Room at Outhouse Gallery (London). Rūma panui totoro is a reading room of Māori feminist and takatāpui publishing which takes the form of a koro: the bud of a fern unravelling. This first edition unfurled around archival periodicals on loan from the Feminist Library (London), building outward contextually, thematically and graphically to uncover roaming readings of Māori feminist lesbian organising as it vibrates across time and space. This builds on previous work for Errant Journal (Netherlands), Bikini Books (Portugal), and Montez Press (UK) recovering lineages of Māori radical publishing, and exploring what it means to do so from here, in the colonial centre.
Alongside Sophie Paul, Kaiya is a founder of Sticky Fingers Publishing, an intradependant feminist press based in South East London (est. 2019). Together, they commission experimental non-fiction exploring queer subjectivity, the erotics of knowledge production, and the materiality of language, uncovering publishing as a site for experimenting with collectivity itself; of gathering through time, on the page.
Kaiya has taught collaborative and experimental publishing across academic and community contexts, delivering lectures and workshops at universities including Goldsmiths University and Central Saint Martins, and artist-led spaces including House of Annetta and Pelican House. Kaiya has worked on archive activations including workshops and zine-making with libraries including the National Library of Scotland, the Feminist Library London, London School of Economics Women’s Library, and Cambridge University’s Women’s Art Collection.
︎︎︎Sign up to my email list
︎ kaiyawaerea0@gmail.com
︎@kaiyawaerea
Most recently, this has resulted in the first iteration of Rūma Panui Totoro ꩜ A Reaching Reading Room at Outhouse Gallery (London). Rūma panui totoro is a reading room of Māori feminist and takatāpui publishing which takes the form of a koro: the bud of a fern unravelling. This first edition unfurled around archival periodicals on loan from the Feminist Library (London), building outward contextually, thematically and graphically to uncover roaming readings of Māori feminist lesbian organising as it vibrates across time and space. This builds on previous work for Errant Journal (Netherlands), Bikini Books (Portugal), and Montez Press (UK) recovering lineages of Māori radical publishing, and exploring what it means to do so from here, in the colonial centre.
Alongside Sophie Paul, Kaiya is a founder of Sticky Fingers Publishing, an intradependant feminist press based in South East London (est. 2019). Together, they commission experimental non-fiction exploring queer subjectivity, the erotics of knowledge production, and the materiality of language, uncovering publishing as a site for experimenting with collectivity itself; of gathering through time, on the page.
Kaiya has taught collaborative and experimental publishing across academic and community contexts, delivering lectures and workshops at universities including Goldsmiths University and Central Saint Martins, and artist-led spaces including House of Annetta and Pelican House. Kaiya has worked on archive activations including workshops and zine-making with libraries including the National Library of Scotland, the Feminist Library London, London School of Economics Women’s Library, and Cambridge University’s Women’s Art Collection.
︎︎︎Sign up to my email list
︎ kaiyawaerea0@gmail.com
︎@kaiyawaerea
Ongoing Collaborations
︎︎︎Sticky Fingers Publishing 2019-ongoing
Sticky Fingers Publishing is an intra-dependant press based in South East London, run by Kaiya Waerea and Sophie Paul. We are a feminist, queer, disabled-led publisher producing experimental non-fiction at the intersection of academia, visual culture, art, design and performance. Our most recent titles include Masturbatory Reader, an anthology exploring the erotics of knowledge production, and our new periodical Get Rid of Meaning: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Writing. We produce our publication in house on our Riso RP 3700, and work with an expanding roster of guest editors.
Selected Writing
︎︎︎ Montez Press Writers Residency, ‘Unfurling Whakapapa Takatāpui’, (London, UK: Montez Press, 2024)
The first essay in an ongoing research project titled Unfurling Whakapapa Takatāpui, this text is an attempt at using the epistemological form of the koru to bring together desperate archival material through time and space. It looks at Patrica Grace’s Potiki, and the first feature story about a trans person in the feminist magazine Broadsheet, to think through how stories give us clues to our own indigenous trans possibilities.
︎︎︎ How To Sleep Faster #15: PRIVATE, ‘Permanently Differed: A Bibliographic Opera’ with Sophie Paul (London, UK: Arcadia Missa Publishing, 2024)
Taking the form of a three-act play, this essay brings together a cast of gender and indigenous studies theorists, performance makers, and historians, to speculatively examine how the process of privatisation has produced hegemonic gender systems and therefor privatised gender, and what feminist publishing, as an activity of public-making, might do to re-common gendered affects.
︎︎︎Access Questions for Self Publishing
(London, UK: PageMasters, 2024)
AQfSP is a resource for thinking about what accessibility means within self- and independent publishing, featuring interviews with Olivia Spring, Abi Palmer and D Mortimer. This pamphlet was initially self published in 2022.
︎︎︎Counter Signals 5: Systems and their Discontents, ‘No Future for Bad Crips’,
(Chicago, USA & Berlin, Germany: Other Forms, 2024)
Written in 2022 and published here alongside a series of diagrams, this essay engages with Anne Marie Willis’ ontological design to explore Rosemarie Garland Thompson’s eugenics logic. In doing so, it explores the way disabled people are designed out of our social futures, and positions disability itself as an interpretive rupture that re-forms what it means to be in the (material and immaterial) made world.
︎︎︎Errant Journal No. 5: Learning from Ancestors ‘Bitches, witches & dykes: The Teachings of Black Feminist Publishing in Aotearoa’
(Amsterdam, Netherlands: Errant Journal, 2023)
This essay begins with an archival encounter with the newspaper bitches, witches & dykes that ran in Aotearoa from 1980-82. From here, it explores the diasporic movement of both bodies and knowledge, and the mechanisms of forgetting built into sites and systems of knowledge keeping.
Selected Residencies & Alternative Education
︎︎︎Wysing Arts Centre, SYLLABUS VIII Independant Study Programme (Various cities, UK & Northern Ireland) 2025-26
︎︎︎Fluent, PRAXIS Independant Study Programme, (Santander, Spain), 2024
︎︎︎Butch Lineages Core Programme (London, UK) 2024
︎︎︎Montez Press Writers Residency (London, UK) 2024
︎︎︎Writing Survival writing course led by Catriona Morton (Online) 2022
︎︎︎Arvon, ESSAY week-long course led by Olivia Sudjic and Sam Fisher (Devon, UK) 2022
︎︎︎The Politics of Intimacy Residency led by Raju Rage (Online) 2020-21
Selected Talks, Workshops & Exhibitions
︎︎︎Unfurling Māori & Pasifika Print Publishing (group study session), The Feminist Library (2026)
︎︎︎Access Questions, Intra-dependence, and Indigenous Feminist Print Publishing, Pressing Issues Lecture Series, Futuress (lecture) 2025
︎︎︎Design & Disability, Great Exhibition Road Festival with Access Power Visibility (panel) 2025
︎︎︎Trans Print in Britain: Archive Study Session with Evelyn Wh-ell, National Library of Scotland (workshop) 2025
︎︎︎READ ALL ABOUT IT: Feminist & Queer Newsletters at the Feminist Library with Sticky Fingers Publishing (workshop) 2025
︎︎︎Design & Disability, Victoria and Albert Museum (group exhibition) 2025
︎︎︎Guest Practioner, Central Saint Martins Fine Art Department (lecture & Q&A) 2025
︎︎︎Imperfect Index 2 (panel) 2024
︎︎︎AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES, London College of Communication, Sticky Fingers Publishing (panel) 2024
︎︎︎Maximilian William Gallery, ‘Five Years of Sticky Fingers Publishing,’ Sticky Fingers Publishing (solo exhibition) 2024
︎︎︎Healing Justice London, ‘Rehearsing Accessible Futures’ hosted by Studio Hyte (panel) 2023
︎︎︎Somerset House Studios, Grounding Practices, ’Making (and Holding) a Crip Planetarium’ (workshop) 2023
︎︎︎AGIA Design Conference ‘Design is Eugenics is Design: Introducing Crip Theory to Design Studies’ (lecture) 2023
︎︎︎Migrants in Culture, ‘Disability & Access for Visual Organising’ (lecture) 2023
︎︎︎Woke Designers Reading Club Season 4: Designing on Crip Time (8 week workshop) 2022
︎︎︎Lunchtime Gallery, I’M BORED OF READING I WANT REVENGE, Sticky Fingers Publishing (solo exhibition) 2022
︎︎︎South Kiosk Gallery, Perspectives on Visibility (solo exhibition) 2021
︎︎︎Dash Arts, World Within Worlds ‘Science Fiction, Disabled Futures’ zine making workshops 2021
︎︎︎Knowle West Media Centre, Come Together ‘Proxy Politics: Making and Unmaking Perspectives on Access’ with APV (workshop) 2021
︎︎︎Transmediale, Almanac of Refusal, Perspectives on Visibility (online exhibition) 2021
︎︎︎Control Shift Network, Perspectives on Visibility (commission & online exhibition) 2020-21
Selected Design Clients
︎︎︎Aislinn Evans
︎︎︎Amanda Wilkinson Gallery
︎︎︎Coventry University
︎︎︎Europa Europa (accessibility consultancy)
︎︎︎Figs in Wigs
︎︎︎Gillie Klieman
︎︎︎Goldsmiths Press
︎︎︎Goldsmiths Students’ Union
︎︎︎Goldsmiths University College Union
︎︎︎Healing Justice London
︎︎︎Holly Revell
︎︎︎LSE Women’s Library
︎︎︎Maximillan Williams Gallery
︎︎︎Sainsbury’s Gallery
︎︎︎SICK Magazine
Full CV, portfolio, and references available upon request.
Please ask to see my access rider.
︎︎︎Sticky Fingers Publishing 2019-ongoing
Sticky Fingers Publishing is an intra-dependant press based in South East London, run by Kaiya Waerea and Sophie Paul. We are a feminist, queer, disabled-led publisher producing experimental non-fiction at the intersection of academia, visual culture, art, design and performance. Our most recent titles include Masturbatory Reader, an anthology exploring the erotics of knowledge production, and our new periodical Get Rid of Meaning: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Writing. We produce our publication in house on our Riso RP 3700, and work with an expanding roster of guest editors.
Selected Writing
︎︎︎ Montez Press Writers Residency, ‘Unfurling Whakapapa Takatāpui’, (London, UK: Montez Press, 2024)
The first essay in an ongoing research project titled Unfurling Whakapapa Takatāpui, this text is an attempt at using the epistemological form of the koru to bring together desperate archival material through time and space. It looks at Patrica Grace’s Potiki, and the first feature story about a trans person in the feminist magazine Broadsheet, to think through how stories give us clues to our own indigenous trans possibilities.
︎︎︎ How To Sleep Faster #15: PRIVATE, ‘Permanently Differed: A Bibliographic Opera’ with Sophie Paul (London, UK: Arcadia Missa Publishing, 2024)
Taking the form of a three-act play, this essay brings together a cast of gender and indigenous studies theorists, performance makers, and historians, to speculatively examine how the process of privatisation has produced hegemonic gender systems and therefor privatised gender, and what feminist publishing, as an activity of public-making, might do to re-common gendered affects.
︎︎︎Access Questions for Self Publishing
(London, UK: PageMasters, 2024)
AQfSP is a resource for thinking about what accessibility means within self- and independent publishing, featuring interviews with Olivia Spring, Abi Palmer and D Mortimer. This pamphlet was initially self published in 2022.
︎︎︎Counter Signals 5: Systems and their Discontents, ‘No Future for Bad Crips’,
(Chicago, USA & Berlin, Germany: Other Forms, 2024)
Written in 2022 and published here alongside a series of diagrams, this essay engages with Anne Marie Willis’ ontological design to explore Rosemarie Garland Thompson’s eugenics logic. In doing so, it explores the way disabled people are designed out of our social futures, and positions disability itself as an interpretive rupture that re-forms what it means to be in the (material and immaterial) made world.
︎︎︎Errant Journal No. 5: Learning from Ancestors ‘Bitches, witches & dykes: The Teachings of Black Feminist Publishing in Aotearoa’
(Amsterdam, Netherlands: Errant Journal, 2023)
This essay begins with an archival encounter with the newspaper bitches, witches & dykes that ran in Aotearoa from 1980-82. From here, it explores the diasporic movement of both bodies and knowledge, and the mechanisms of forgetting built into sites and systems of knowledge keeping.
Selected Residencies & Alternative Education
︎︎︎Wysing Arts Centre, SYLLABUS VIII Independant Study Programme (Various cities, UK & Northern Ireland) 2025-26
︎︎︎Fluent, PRAXIS Independant Study Programme, (Santander, Spain), 2024
︎︎︎Butch Lineages Core Programme (London, UK) 2024
︎︎︎Montez Press Writers Residency (London, UK) 2024
︎︎︎Writing Survival writing course led by Catriona Morton (Online) 2022
︎︎︎Arvon, ESSAY week-long course led by Olivia Sudjic and Sam Fisher (Devon, UK) 2022
︎︎︎The Politics of Intimacy Residency led by Raju Rage (Online) 2020-21
Selected Talks, Workshops & Exhibitions
︎︎︎Unfurling Māori & Pasifika Print Publishing (group study session), The Feminist Library (2026)
︎︎︎Access Questions, Intra-dependence, and Indigenous Feminist Print Publishing, Pressing Issues Lecture Series, Futuress (lecture) 2025
︎︎︎Design & Disability, Great Exhibition Road Festival with Access Power Visibility (panel) 2025
︎︎︎Trans Print in Britain: Archive Study Session with Evelyn Wh-ell, National Library of Scotland (workshop) 2025
︎︎︎READ ALL ABOUT IT: Feminist & Queer Newsletters at the Feminist Library with Sticky Fingers Publishing (workshop) 2025
︎︎︎Design & Disability, Victoria and Albert Museum (group exhibition) 2025
︎︎︎Guest Practioner, Central Saint Martins Fine Art Department (lecture & Q&A) 2025
︎︎︎Imperfect Index 2 (panel) 2024
︎︎︎AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES, London College of Communication, Sticky Fingers Publishing (panel) 2024
︎︎︎Maximilian William Gallery, ‘Five Years of Sticky Fingers Publishing,’ Sticky Fingers Publishing (solo exhibition) 2024
︎︎︎Healing Justice London, ‘Rehearsing Accessible Futures’ hosted by Studio Hyte (panel) 2023
︎︎︎Somerset House Studios, Grounding Practices, ’Making (and Holding) a Crip Planetarium’ (workshop) 2023
︎︎︎AGIA Design Conference ‘Design is Eugenics is Design: Introducing Crip Theory to Design Studies’ (lecture) 2023
︎︎︎Migrants in Culture, ‘Disability & Access for Visual Organising’ (lecture) 2023
︎︎︎Woke Designers Reading Club Season 4: Designing on Crip Time (8 week workshop) 2022
︎︎︎Lunchtime Gallery, I’M BORED OF READING I WANT REVENGE, Sticky Fingers Publishing (solo exhibition) 2022
︎︎︎South Kiosk Gallery, Perspectives on Visibility (solo exhibition) 2021
︎︎︎Dash Arts, World Within Worlds ‘Science Fiction, Disabled Futures’ zine making workshops 2021
︎︎︎Knowle West Media Centre, Come Together ‘Proxy Politics: Making and Unmaking Perspectives on Access’ with APV (workshop) 2021
︎︎︎Transmediale, Almanac of Refusal, Perspectives on Visibility (online exhibition) 2021
︎︎︎Control Shift Network, Perspectives on Visibility (commission & online exhibition) 2020-21
Selected Design Clients
︎︎︎Aislinn Evans
︎︎︎Amanda Wilkinson Gallery
︎︎︎Coventry University
︎︎︎Europa Europa (accessibility consultancy)
︎︎︎Figs in Wigs
︎︎︎Gillie Klieman
︎︎︎Goldsmiths Press
︎︎︎Goldsmiths Students’ Union
︎︎︎Goldsmiths University College Union
︎︎︎Healing Justice London
︎︎︎Holly Revell
︎︎︎LSE Women’s Library
︎︎︎Maximillan Williams Gallery
︎︎︎Sainsbury’s Gallery
︎︎︎SICK Magazine
Full CV, portfolio, and references available upon request.
Please ask to see my access rider.