Identity

Writing

“I’m a burnt tongue, crying for the promised river.”

By Anne-Marie Te Whiu

28.04.2023

In a wide-ranging conversation ahead of the release of poet and performer Daley Rangi’s poetry collection Burnt Tongue, Associate Editor for HUM Anne-Marie Te Whiu talks with Rangi about the role of stories, language and community, on the Gadigal lands of Sydney, Australia. 

Calendar

Yuki Kihara, Powerhouse Late x Vivid Ideas: Paradise Fair

15 June 2023

Powerhouse Ultimo, Sydney, Australia

Calendar

Kate McIntosh, Lake Life

18 May —
21 June 2023

Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels, Belgium & Schäxpir, Linz, Austria

Calendar

Jade Hadfield, MIRROR: New views on photography

19 May 2023 —
28 January 2024

State Library Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

Writing

Thinking Historically in the Present

By Megan Tamati-Quennell

17.04.2023

Having attended the opening week of Sharjah Biennial 15, Megan Tamati-Quennell writes about the work of Aotearoa artists Robyn Kahukiwa and Kahurangiariki Smith, included in this large-scale exhibition in the United Arab Emirates, and how Hoor Al Qasimi has carried the curatorial mantle from Okwui Enwezor to create an exhibition that both celebrates the late curator’s legacy and the diversity, solidarity and strength of non-Western art.

Calendar

18 Aotearoa filmmakers and media artists, 2023 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival

04 May —
15 May 2023

Little Tokyo, Gardena Cinemas, and Regal L.A. Live, Los Angeles, USA

Calendar

Nikau Hindin and Rongomai Kapiri-Mārama Hoskins, O Quilombismo

01 June —
26 August 2023

Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany

Calendar

Benjamin Work, Tautahi – In the Face of Adversity

09 May —
30 May 2023

Bergman Gallery, Rarotonga, Cook Islands

Calendar

Edith Amituanai, Martin Sagadin, Sriwhana Spong and Pati Tyrell, 'Legacies' international tour

03 April —
01 October 2023

ADM Gallery Singapore; Stelo, Portland, USA; LUX, London; Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany; Storage Art Space, Bangkok

Writing

Forever Fresh Talanoa Series 2.2

By Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Grace Iwashita-Taylor, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Lana Lopesi

12.12.2022

Our second episode in this four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Grace Iwashita-Taylor and Lana Lopesi discuss their recent writing initiatives, each focused on fostering the conditions that allow Indigenous writing to flourish. Written response by Aotearoa writer and curator Ioana Gordon-Smith.

Writing

Forever Fresh Talanoa Series 2.1

By Ioana Gordon-Smith, Rosanna Raymond, Tanu Gago

10.10.2022

Our first episode in this four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, has Rosanna Raymond and Tanu Gago reflecting on recent international projects and the difficulties of being Moana artists working in countries with cultural amnesia over their colonial pasts. Written response by Aotearoa writer and curator Ioana Gordon-Smith.

Writing

FAFSWAG at documenta fifteen

By Will Fredo

20.09.2022

Berlin-based artist and writer Will Fredo discusses the decolonial gestures at play in Aotearoa-based art collective FAFSWAG’s contributions to documenta fifteen, encompassing works that champion unapologetic self-expression, queer joy and the power of futurity in rejecting colonial inheritances.

Project

Forever Fresh Talanoa Series 2

Partnership

Following on from our 2021 talanoa series, this is a new round of edited online talanoa (conversations) between several tagata Moana (Māori and Pasifika people) across the globe, once again produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective.

Each talanoa in this series focuses on different topics central to life in the diaspora and is individually responded to in writing by Ioana Gordon-Smith, a Sāmoan/Pākehā arts writer and curator living in Aotearoa.

Writing

Meandering Gestures, Infiltrating Language

By Imaad Majeed

08.09.2022

Artist, curator and writer Imaad Majeed talks with Aotearoa artist Areez Katki about his participation in Language is Migrant, the latest edition of the international arts festival Colomboscope, in Sri Lanka, and about using embroidery and textiles to explore ideas of displacement, trajectories of violence, and the colonial legacy of his own Parsi heritage.

Writing

An interview with Yuki Kihara

By Contemporary HUM

24.05.2022

In the opening week of the 2022 Biennale di Venezia, Contemporary HUM sat down with the artist representing Aotearoa, Yuki Kihara, to discuss her exhibition Paradise Camp, and what it means to bring a Pasifika, Fa'afafine voice to the international audience of this major event.

Writing

An interview with the curators of 'Paradise Camp'

By Contemporary HUM, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Natalie King

24.05.2022

In the opening week of the 2022 Biennale di Venezia, Contemporary HUM sat down with the Aotearoa New Zealand pavilion’s Curator, Natalie King, and Assistant Pasifika Curator Ioana-Gordon Smith, to talk about bringing Yuki Kihara’s Paradise Camp to Venice.

Writing

HUM live from the 2022 Venice Biennale

By Contemporary HUM

24.04.2022

From 20—24 April 2022, Contemporary HUM brings you live coverage, exclusive images and videos from the opening week of The Milk of Dreams, The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, including Yuki Kihara's Paradise Camp for the New Zealand Pavilion.

Writing

A painter’s painter

By Clare Gemima

07.02.2022

Aotearoa artist Christina Pataialii features in the fifth New Museum Triennial, one of the world’s leading exhibitions for emerging artists. New York-based writer Clare Gemima visits the exhibition and reflects on Pataialii’s rule-breaking approach to painting technique, and the artist’s search for a language for her family history, identity and the cultural “in-between”.

Writing

Vivian Lynn / Liliane Lijn

By Laura Castagnini

07.10.2021

Following her death in 2018, pioneering feminist artist Vivian Lynn is receiving unprecedented international attention, after a lifetime of exhibiting widely in Aotearoa, but never outside of New Zealand. Following her recent inclusion in the 13th Gwangju Biennale and a solo exhibition at Southard Reid, London, Laura Castagnini reflects on the long-overdue revival of feminist art practices from the 1980s, and considers the striking parallels between Lynn’s work and her London-based counterpart, Liliane Lijn. 

Writing

Forever Fresh Talanoa Series

By Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Ariana Davis, Jaimie Waititi, Jessica Palalagi

25.09.2021

The final episode in our four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees writer and poet Anne-Marie Te Whiu respond to a discussion between Ariana Davis, Jessica Palalagi and Jaimie Waititi as they explore the idea of ReMoanafication, individual and collective connections, and reclaiming narratives.

Writing

They Call Me The Believer

By Habib William Kherbek

21.09.2021

Michael Stevenson’s retrospective at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, traces a 35 year practice exploring the intricacies of storytelling and truth in popular culture, media and technology. In this piece, Habib William Kherbek explores how Stevenson’s practice calls into question the infrastructures of knowledge formation in a sprawling, fragmented exhibition from inside the belly of a whale. 

Writing

On Louise Stevenson's 'Someplace Else'

By Chris Holdaway

24.08.2021

In Someplace Else, Louise Stevenson chronicles her complex and unfolding relationship with Hungary, travelling back and forth from Aotearoa since her first visit in 1991. In this elaborate, handbound mixed media book, Stevenson traces decades of travel with careful preservation of ephemera, annotating ticket stubs and found photographs with her own drawings and writing. In this piece, poet and bookmaker Chris Holdaway considers the memories that inhere in overlooked items, repurposed carefully by Stevenson as talismans of place and the passage of time.

Writing

A protest and a mourning ritual

By Michelangelo Corsaro

11.05.2021

In their work for the 13th Gwangju Biennale, the Bad Fiji Gyals call attention to the legacy of Girmitiya women, indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent recruited by British colonial authorities to work on Fiji’s sugarcane plantations. Associate Curator Michelangelo Corsaro writes about the collaborative work of Aotearoa-based artist Quishile Charan and US-based artist Esha Pillay.

Writing

Forever Fresh Talanoa Series

By AJ Fata, Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Drew Broderick, Josh Tengan

29.05.2021

The third episode of our four-part talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees writer and poet Anne-Marie Te Whiu respond to a discussion between AJ Fata, Josh Tengan, and Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick who explore the concept of time and ancestral knowledge as a path for the historical future.

Writing

Time and Water

By Maya Wilson-Sanchez

03.09.2020

Presented earlier this year at Oakville Galleries in Canada, Shannon Te Ao's two-channel video and sound installation Ka mua, ka muri recently opened at Remai Modern, Saskatoon. In this part essay, part dialogue, writer Maya Wilson-Sanchez examines Te Ao's new project, and meditates on the relationships between indigenous populations in colonised nations.

Writing

Forever Fresh

By Jessica Palalagi

06.11.2020

Jessica Palalagi, co-founder of the In*ter*is*land Collective, describes how their physical base in London, MOKU Pacific HQ, London, has served as a place for tagata Moana in the UK to create and meet since its inception in 2018, and reflects on the highs and lows of the past three years, including their exhibition in late 2019, Mana Moana, Mana Wahine.

 

Writing

Abstracting Ambivalence

By Eloise Callister-Baker

25.06.2020

From putting her Doctor of Fine Arts on hold to dealing with the isolation caused by the Coronavirus lockdown, Vietnamese/Aotearoa artist Anh Trần discusses why she wanted to take on the two-year Rijksakademie artist program in the Netherlands, her move to Amsterdam and how it's impacted her practice and life.

Writing

The Near Side

By Jon Bywater

13.05.2020

The 22nd Biennale of Sydney opened on 14 March 2020 and unfortunately had to close its doors only nine days later due to Covid-19. Prior to its closing, writer Jon Bywater managed to visit NIRIN, looking in particular at participating artists from Aotearoa including Emily Karaka, Elisapeta Heta & John Miller, Lisa Reihana, Kulimoe’anga ‘Stone’ Maka, and FAFSWAG.

Writing

Situated practices

By Kathryn Weir, Zhang Hanlu

07.03.2020

Held at Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, the most recent iteration of the ongoing project Cosmopolis included Aotearoa artists Lisa Reihana and Nandita Kumar amongst 40 international artists, all exploring technology and alternative ontologies. Chief curator, Kathryn Weir, and associated curator Zhang Hanlu share their reflections on Cosmopolis #2: rethinking the human.

Writing

Handshake 5: In Dialogue

By Roseanne Bartley

22.01.2020

A look at Handshake, a project dedicated to developing emerging New Zealand jewellers nationally and internationally, and their recent exchange with Coda Museum in the Netherlands. Participating jewellers from Aotearoa include Neke Moa, Vivien Atkinson, Sarah Read, Becky Bliss, Vanessa Arthur, Sarah Walker-Holt, Sandra Schmid, Nadene Carr, Caroline Thomas, Brendon Monson, Nik Hanton, and Kelly McDonald.