Arohanui, Carmen xx
Zia Ravenscroft
When I first moved to Te Whanganui-a-Tara, I was entranced by the diva on the green pedestrian crossing lights around Cuba Street. A hand on her hip, hair piled high, strutting across the street like she owns it. Because she does. This is Carmen Rupe, the Queen of Wellington, New Zealand’s most famous transsexual. Arohanui, Carmen xx is a new exhibit at Wellington Museum and the first to celebrate her incredible life.
I had the honour of being shown around by Lizzie Murray, Marketing Lead at Wheako Pōneke, and Dr Jamie Metzger (Ngāi Tahu), Kairaranga Taonga Māori at Experience Wellington and co-curator of the exhibition alongside Leilani Sio, Curator Communities. Lizzie and Jamie showed me around the exhibition before it opened on October 3rd the exhibition and took me into Carmen’s glamorous world.
Carmen Tione Rupe (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Hāua, Ngāti Heke-a-Wai) was born in 1936 and knew from childhood she was destined for the spotlight, a ‘Jane looking for her Tarzan.’ She worked in sawmills, a post office, hotels, and as a nurse, and started drag in compulsory military training. The name Carmen comes from silver screen icons like Carmen Miranda and from ‘leaning into cars to talk to men.’ The entrance to Arohanui, Carmen xx takes you into her early dreamspace and imagination, with jungle scenery and fairy lights capturing the allure of a young starlet who knew who she could become.
After transitioning, Carmen moved between Auckland and Sydney as an entertainer, drag queen, and sex worker in the late 1950s and 1960s. In 1966–three years before the Stonewall Riots, and a decade before New Zealand’s first political homosexual rights groups–Carmen was arrested for dressing as a woman in public. The judge ruled that there was actually no law preventing perceived men from dressing as women, in a landmark case for trans rights in Aotearoa and globally. A true style icon, she donated part of her wardrobe to Te Papa later in her life with the jewellery she wanted displayed with the outfits. The majority of the exhibition is decorated floor-to-ceiling in a deep red, with music playing reminiscent of a radio station Carmen would listen to.
In 1967, Carmen moved to Wellington and opened her International Coffee Lounge, a café downstairs and brothel upstairs. Arohanui, Carmen xx has an immersive replica of the infamous doorway to the Coffee Lounge and telephones with Carmen’s voice from interviews. Lizzie told me how important it was to have Carmen represented in her own words and using the words and language she would’ve used, and that her own quotes were often more perfect captions than anything the curators could have come up with. True to her eclectic tastes, the Lounge was decorated with tropical fish tanks and a live parrot. It was unlicensed but customers could add brandy to their coffee on request. Carmen didn’t drink and believed in ‘sensible buzzing’ with a lemonade, using a big glass to make her hands look smaller. Her favourite lemonade brand and the glass she used are on display. Potential brothel clients indicated their sex worker preferences based on how they placed their cup and saucer (upside-down cup for a cis woman, a cup on its side for a trans woman, a saucer on top of the cup for a man.)
In a TV interview in 1975 she said she knew some MPs were gay or bisexual and was found guilty of breaching parliamentary privilege by accusing them of committing homosexuality. It was still a crime until 1986. She showed up to Parliament in a limo, and the case was dropped without her apologising. She continued her political career by running for mayor of Wellington in 1977 with the truly iconic campaign slogan, ‘Get in behind!’ Her policies were prostitution reform, decriminalising homosexuality, decriminalising abortion, extending bar opening hours to 2am, better sex education in schools, and lowering the drinking age – all of which later happened, proving that the dolls have been and always will be trendsetters and tastemakers. In a mayoral debate she declared, “I am better looking than Sir Francis Kitts, I am more charming than Michael Fowler, and I could beat Tony Brunt in a brawl any day.” Arohanui, Carmen xx’s collection of ephemera from across her life includes a letter from VUWSA inviting her to speak at mayoral debates on campus, as well as posters, her business cards, and embroidery. One of my favourite pieces is her birth certificate and passport, which she legally changed to ‘– ’ instead of M or F for a gender marker. This is another landmark moment in trans history in Aotearoa, before changing your gender marker on your birth certificate was accessible to most people.
Carmen also ran a nightclub and cabaret called The Balcony, two second-hand curio and antique stores, two more brothels (one with elaborately themed rooms and one decorated entirely in red, down to the telephone), a beauty salon, and three other coffee lounges and tearooms. She mostly employed queer people and especially transgender women of colour, to combat the discrimination queer people faced finding stable work. Homosexuality and prostitution was still illegal, and working was extremely risky for Carmen and her staff. All of these venues were subject to frequent violence, harassment, and police inspections and raids. The Balcony had a system of alarms that went off during a police raid so the patrons could exit safely. Despite that, a community flourished visibly and Carmen’s confidence and pride in who she was had a very real impact on trans and queer people.
Carmen’s lease on The Balcony ended in 1979, and she was crowned the Queen of Wellington before moving back to Sydney where she remained involved in queer advocacy and entertainment. Nobody else has been crowned Queen of Wellington since, and it feels fitting that she is eternally reigning. The mobility scooter she rode topless at Sydney Mardi Gras in 2008 is in pride of place in the centre of the room, complete with a bigger mirror she installed to reapply her lipstick better. She died in 2011, and the pedestrian lights depicting her were installed in 2016 to honour the 30th anniversary of the Homosexual Law Reform Act. Carmen had so much aroha and manaakitanga to give to her community and to her chosen whānau. Jamie tells me she really hopes visitors take away how proud Carmen was to be Māori, and how important it was to situate her in her own context and in the city she reigned over. The credits are entirely in te reo, and the reo has been incorporated into the exhibition intentionally so it adds something for fluent speakers while not keeping non-fluent speakers at a distance. The level of care shown in this exhibition reflects that, from the portraits encased in Perspex so you can read the notes she wrote on the back to her own korowai being on display for the first time ever.
A series of photographs displayed near the end of the exhibition show Carmen all dolled up with her trans sisters and drag queen friends. They look like any group of queens I could see nowadays at Ivy, smiling and hanging out after a drag show in the smokers’ section. Carmen’s very existence and tangible legacy in this city is a reminder that trans and queer people have always existed, and will always continue to exist, and we will make beautiful lives for ourselves along the way. She paved the way for so many people to feel free to be themselves, and is a true ancestor for queer people who often don’t have someone in their family to look up to or recognise themselves in.
Arohanui, Carmen xx is a powerful celebration of her incredible and groundbreaking life and will hopefully introduce her to a new audience who may recognise the diva on the green traffic lights but aren’t as familiar with her story and who she really is. This truly unmissable exhibition is on at Te Waka Huia Wellington Museum from now until the 18th of February 2027, with admission fees at just $6 for unwaged visitors and $10 for waged visitors. The museum store also has a Carmen collection, with stickers, fans, a tea towel featuring the Coffee Lounge teacup and saucer code, a dress-up doll postcard, and ‘Carmen for Mayor’ buttons and t-shirts I can’t wait to get my gay little hands on. It’s Carmen’s city; we’re all just living in it.
