Toi Aro is pleased to announce that Joanne Marshall has been awarded the 2026 d/Deaf and/or Disabled Artist Development Residency. Jo will be in residence for 8 weeks at Toi Aro working on a new body of photographic work. Feel free to come by and meet her in the studio. This is the fifth residency we have offered and we’re really looking forward to working alongside Joanne.
About the artist
Joanne Marshall is an intersectional Deaf visual artist, fine-art photographer, and independent disability rights advocate based in the Wellington Region, Aotearoa New Zealand. Working through a distinct Deaf lens, her practice centers on visucentrism—a spatial and hyper-attentive visual methodology that translates how she sees and perceives the natural world. Operating without reliance on acoustic or auditory cues, Joanne perceives environments through three-dimensional spatial relationships, geometric alignment, underlying structural lines, and high-contrast light gradients. Her work reveals the living architecture of Aotearoa’s landscapes and coastal ecologies, commanding a "spatial pause" that compels viewers to stop, slow down, and observe the kinetic details and intricate structures of nature that are often overlooked.
Holding a Bachelor of Media Arts (Visual Arts) from Wintec, Joanne leverages her lived experience with profound Deafness and a complex neurological condition to inform both her artistic vision and her rights-based advocacy. Her fine-art practice combines hand-held field photography with a thoughtful presentation of works that continues the viewer’s experience into how she sees the world around her, guided by core Deaf and inclusive design principles
Her work develops across a visual continuum structured around four core natural motifs captured in nature: Hydraulic Force & Kinetic Silence, freezing cascading water and ocean spray to strip away acoustic roar and emphasize fluid weight; Density, Pressure & Organic Micro-Ecologies, exploring oyster flanges, cockles, and sea lettuce to translate spatial compression under pressure; Terrestrial Adaptation & Mineral Fractures, capturing lichens, concentric fungi, and mud craters as a visual language of geological endurance; and Visucentric Abstraction & Spatial Voids, studying leaf vein networks and shell tips reaching across pitch-black voids to capture visual vibration. Together, these elements transform everyday landscapes into a compelling fine-art language of presence, survival, and visual attunement.
"At its heart, my practice is a lifelong, multi-tiered artistic inquiry centered on observing human existence, our deep longing to belong to nature, and the physical traces we leave behind."
To see more of Joanne’s work:
https://jomarshallphotography.queensberryworkspace.com/galleryslide/1185956a8d84776caca/list
