Aria McInnes is an artist and retailer who’s installation-based practice examines the staging of sincerity across personal and public spheres, as mediated by consumer culture. Often drawing from the performative logics of reality television, telemarketing, and retail environments, her work explores the tensions between moral intent and commercial participation—particularly within service roles, where one is at once “in service” and “being served.” Through parody and theatrical exaggeration, her work embraces the ridiculousness of these contradictions, offering humour as both a coping mechanism and a critical tool for navigating the moral ambiguities of participating in the very systems it seeks to question.

She holds a BFA (Hons) from Massey University’s College of Creative Arts and an MFA from Auckland University of Technology.