Colonialism

Calendar

Tamsen Hopkinson, James Nguyen: Open Glossary

16 September —
19 November 2023

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia

Calendar

Sam Hamilton with Clara Chon, Dr. Tru Paraha, Mere Tokorahi Boynton, Rhonda Tibble, Vaimaila Urale, Te Moana Meridian

25 August —
07 October 2023

Converge 45 at Oregon Contemporary, Portland, USA

Writing

The Octopus Against a Sharp White Background

By Amit Noy

14.05.2023

Writer and choreographer Amit Noy reviews Atamira Dance Company’s performance of Te Wheke in the Lenape territory of New York City, and finds a work enlivened by indelible performances and critical Indigenous inquiry.

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

Simon Denny, Metaverse Landscapes

14 May —
16 July 2023

Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover, Germany

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

Calendar

Christopher Ulutupu, Hidden Amongst Clouds in 18th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival

03 March —
05 March 2023

Ravensdowne Barracks, Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK

Calendar

Christopher Ulutupu, The Pleasures of Unbelonging in 18th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival

04 March 2023

Maltings Henry Travers, Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK

Writing

Still Alive

By Stuart Munro

18.10.2022

For this year's Aichi Triennale, writer Stuart Munro takes a trip to some of its more isolated venues to see works by Aotearoa artists Nikau Hindin and Yuki Kihara. Visiting buildings of historical significance where the various parts of the exhibition are installed, Munro unravels the far-reaching connections of Hindin and Kihara's contributions to family, survival and place. 

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.

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

Caretaker to Caretaker

By Bopha Chhay, Paula Booker

18.01.2022

In Part One of this interview, Vancouver-based Aotearoa curators Paula Booker and Bopha Chhay talk about Chhay’s work as director of non-profit artist-run initiative Artspeak, the meaning of care in a curating role, the relationship between writing and art, and the place of artist-run initiatives in Canada and Aotearoa.

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

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.

Project

Forever Fresh Talanoa Series

Partnership

A collaboration between In*ter*is*land Collective and Contemporary HUM consisting of four edited online talanoa (conversations) between several tagata Moana (Māori and Pasifika people) across the globe which centre around the principles of talanoa; ofa, mafana, malie and faka'apa'apa (love, warmth, humour and respect) and the ability to have a "reciprocal knowledge exchange".

The talanoa within this series will focus on topics such as life in the diaspora, moana futurism, queer identities, and ReMoanafication, and all will be individually responded to in written form by Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Te Rarawa), reminding us of our intricate connection and shared ancestry in Te Moananui-a-Kiwa.

Writing

Mata Aho Collective at the Dhaka Art Summit

By Pauline Autet

21.04.2020

We finish our first series focusing on the Asia region with Contemporary HUM Editor Pauline Autet interviewing Mata Aho Collective on their participation in the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh in February 2020, where they partook in panel discussions and practised a type of waiata (song) called a pātere.

Writing

Raw Matériel

By Emil McAvoy

10.06.2019

Within the greater context of the recent massacre in Christchurch, San Fransisco-based New Zealand photographer Jono Rotman discusses his new work Matériel which depicts a series of privately owned guns in the US, and his recent publication Mongrelism, which features the New Zealand-based gang, the Mighty Mongrel Mob.

Writing

Whose Oceania?

By James Belich, Lana Lopesi, Matariki Williams, Pauline Autet

14.11.2018

Missed HUM's panel discussion Whose Oceania? in London? We're excited to publish the transcript of this discussion, which proved to be a stimulating talk interrogating the themes and issues addressed in the exhibition Oceania at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, as well as the responses to it from across Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.

Writing

Mana Moana in the UK’s year of Captain Cook

By Ahilapalapa Rands, Jo Walsh

21.09.2018

London-based cultural producer Jo Walsh and artist Ahilapalapa Rands discuss some of the exhibitions and programmes taking place in the UK to mark the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook's departure to the Pacific, which also resonates to many as the start of colonisation in Moana-Nui-A-Kiwa. In this conversation piece, Rands and Walsh focus in on the projects they have been involved in, working with The British Library, Whitby Library and other UK institutions, and their efforts to disrupt the major narratives surrounding Cook.

Writing

With the sun aglow, I have my pensive moods

By Andrew Clifford

04.12.2017

Andrew Clifford writes on Shannon Te Ao’s installation, With the sun aglow I have my pensive moods, one of four key new commissions for the 2017 Edinburgh Art Festival.

Writing

Islands on Sale

By Alastair Carruthers, Contemporary HUM, Mataaho Collective, Tessa Giblin

05.08.2017

In this panel discussion between Erena Baker and Bridget Reweti (Mata Aho Collective), Alastair Carruthers (Commissioner of NZ at Venice 2017) and Tessa Giblin (Commissioner and Curator of Ireland at Venice 2017), the participants discuss globalisation, national identity, the politics of representation and New Zealand's role in contemporary international art discourse. 

Project

Yuki Kihara at the 59th Venice Biennale

Partnership

Small island ecologies, climate change, queer rights, Gauguin’s gaze, intersectionality and decolonization; these are just some of the topics explored by interdisciplinary artist Yuki Kihara in her project Paradise Camp, representing New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale in Italy. HUM is proud to be a media partner of this exciting project, open to the public from 23 April - 27 November 2022.

Writing

Caretaker to Caretaker

By Bopha Chhay, Paula Booker

18.01.2022

In Part Two of this interview, Vancouver-based Aotearoa curators Paula Booker and Bopha Chhay talk about Chhay’s work as director of non-profit artist-run initiative Artspeak, the challenges of maintaining a space during COVID-19, what decolonisation in art institutions can be like and working on unceded territory, and curating recent projects around the relationship between art and writing.

Writing

We See the Same Stars

By Gabriela Salgado, Sabine Casparie

16.11.2021

In this interview with Gabriela Salgado, former Artistic Director of Te Tuhi, Sabine Casparie sits down with the curator to discuss her new London-based project, Southern Stars, a platform connecting artists from the southern hemisphere. Casparie and Salgado discuss how the European art world is responding to new, Indigenous voices, and Southern Stars’ first exhibition, Golden Daughters of the Sun, featuring Aotearoa artist Salome Tanuvasa.

Calendar

Matthew Galloway in Provincia 53. Arte, territorio y descolonización del Sáhara

16 September 2017 —
04 February 2018

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Leon, Spain

Writing

Forever Fresh Talanoa Series

By Afatasi The Artist, Anne-Marie Te Whiu, Momoe i manu ae ala atea’e Tasker

28.02.2021

In this first episode of our new special series of talanoa (online conversations) produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, Anne-Marie Te Whiu responds to a discussion between Afatasi the Artist and Momoe i manu ae ala atea’e Tasker on identity and how it's expressed in their creative practices, finding their community in various daily rituals while living in the diaspora, and maintaining their connections to 'home'.

Writing

What's for - Decolonial - Dinner?

By Tania Willard

18.12.2019

Co-curated by Lana Lopesi, the exhibition Transits and Returns at Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada presents the work of 21 Indigenous artists from Northern America and the Pacific, and includes Aotearoa artists BC Collective, Louisa Afoa, Ahilapalapa Rands, and Edith Amituanai. In this essay, Indigenous Canadian artist and curator Tania Willard contextualises the work within a wider art history and personal history.

 

Project

Whose Oceania?

Panel discussion in London

Whose Oceania? is Contemporary HUM’s second public panel discussion, held on 29 September 2018 to coincide with the opening of the Oceania exhibition, on at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

This exhibition is a major international event for Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific, and we have decided to take the opportunity to bring together several professionals from different backgrounds and practices in Māori and Pacific art, as well as colonial studies, to offer informed and critical responses to the show.

Writing

Ka Mua, Ka Muri

By Louise Garrett

28.02.2018

Nathan Pohio’s Raise the anchor, unfurl the sails, set course to the centre of an ever setting sun! was one of three projects by artists from Aotearoa New Zealand presented at documenta 14. Louise Garrett explores Pohio’s presentation in Kassel and invites the artist himself to reflect on his participation and to discuss the work he presented in Athens, documenta’s parallel location in 2017.