Community
Writing
Celebrating almost a decade of discourse, connection and advocacy
24.10.2025
After almost ten years of critical inquiry and advocacy for Aotearoa's international visual arts community, Contemporary HUM has come to a close. This page features a final message from the Board of Trustees, celebrates the collective effort that made our work possible, and provides a detailed guide to navigating the archive, which remains free and fully accessible for future research.
Writing
Through Air, Breath and Stone
By Yuka Keino
07.10.2025
Travelling to Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, curator Yuka Keino responds to Aotearoa artist Sarah Hudson’s work Reconciliation. Keino explores the role of stone as a medium of memory, linking the distant islands of Moutohorā, Aotearoa, and Megijima, Japan, through material practices and ancestral knowledge, suggesting a site specificity that is transformed into something translocal, relational and ultimately decolonial.
Writing
From Moutohorā to Megijima
20.08.2025
Aotearoa artist Sarah Hudson (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāi Tūhoe) speaks to UK artist Joanne Coates on the occasion of her participation in the Naoshima Art Residency and Setouchi Triennale in Japan, and simultaneous exhibition in Whakatāne, Aotearoa New Zealand. Taking Hudson’s series of works "Reconciliation" as a point of departure, Hudson and Coates discuss how histories embedded in land and community can be explored in different lands, among different communities, and the radical act of protecting space for quietness, calmness and reciprocity.
Calendar
Yukari 海堀 Kaihori, KAIR Artist Residence 2024 Exhibition and Art Tour
26 October —
10 November 2024
Kamiyama-cho Noson Kankyo Kaizen Center, Kamiyama, Japan
Calendar
Yona Lee, between the lines
19 October —
16 November 2024
Openspace Bae, Busan, South Korea
Calendar
alys longley, Proyecto Undular-Undular Project
8.00PM — 10.00PM
07 October 2024
Movement Research, NYC, USA
Calendar
Talia Smith, CPR 2024: Who is being heard?
23 September —
14 October 2024
Finland, Norway and Sweden
Calendar
David Rickard, Ars Electronica 2024
04 September —
08 September 2024
POSTCITY, Linz, Germany
Calendar
Emily Karaka, Ka Awatea, A New Dawn
07 September —
01 December 2024
Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Calendar
Greg Semu, Sacred + Forbidden
03 July —
23 September 2024
Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Gadigal Lands Sydney, Australia
Calendar
Amanda Newall and Ecke Bonk, Stranded – W(h)ale a Remake Portfolio – More Than This, Even
06 June —
29 September 2024
Akureyri Art Museum, Akureyri, Iceland
Calendar
Sarah Rose, Versam residency and exhibition
01 June —
31 July 2024
Kunst Garage Versam, Graubünden, Switzerland
Writing
We Work Well Together
By Julia Craig
11.02.2024
Presented at Phillida Reid, Claudia Kogachi’s Labour of Love and Nova Paul’s Hawaiki offer frames through which to view the role of collaborative practice in building worlds of love, care, and self-determination.
Calendar
Alexa Wilson in Spring Season performance series
8.00PM — 10.00PM
17 May 2024
Grace Exhibition Space, NYC, USA
Calendar
Hana Pera Aoake, Delfina Foundation residency
02 April —
23 June 2024
Delfina Foundation, London, UK
Calendar
Ilke Gers in Building Castles in the Sky
05 April —
21 April 2024
various locations in Ghent, Belgium
Calendar
FAFSWAG Arts Collective, Asia TOPA Radar
6.30PM — 9.00PM
27 March 2024
The Substation, Naarm Melbourne, Australia
Calendar
FAFSWAG Arts Collective, Queer PHOTO: Alteration
27 January —
24 March 2024
The Substation, Melbourne, Australia
Writing
Mataaho 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 Mataaho 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.
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.
Calendar
Pelenakeke Brown and Sally Tran, BRIClab residency
01 September 2023 —
01 September 2024
BRIC, New York City, USA
Writing
Forever Fresh Talanoa Series 2.3
By Ioana Gordon-Smith, Michel Mulipola, Skawennati, Solomon Enos
07.06.2023
Our third episode in this new talanoa series, produced in collaboration with In*ter*is*land Collective, sees Michel Mulipola, Skawennati and Solomon Enos discuss the importance of shapeshifting, imagination and innovation in Indigenous storytelling, as well as in their respective practices. Written response by Aotearoa writer and curator Ioana Gordon-Smith.
Calendar
Ilke Gers and Tanu Gago, Into Nature: Time Horizons
29 July —
29 October 2023
various venues around Drenthe, The Netherlands
Writing
Rocks on Wheels and Flying Shoes
By Rosemary Forde
28.03.2023
Curator Rosemary Forde explores the art-historical and civic context in which artist Mike Hewson’s recent public playground in Naarm Melbourne, Rocks on Wheels, has landed.
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.
Project
HUM stands for NZ at Venice
Special feature
In light of the review of Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘official’ presence at the Venice Biennale, HUM invited New Zealanders on- and off-shore who have visited or been involved in ‘New Zealand at Venice’ projects—as artists, pavilion attendants, exhibition installers or designers—to reflect on how involvement in (or experience of) our previous national pavilions have influenced their own careers, and the international profile of contemporary art from Aotearoa.
Writing
Aotearoa Reviews its Official Participation in the Venice Biennale
By Anna Brown, Bruce Barber, Heather Galbraith, Hutch Wilco, James Goggin, Jennifer Flay, Jhana Millers, Julia Holderness, Laura Preston, Michael Stevenson, Ron Hanson, Sophie Thorn, Tessa Giblin, Tessa Laird
26.09.2022
In light of the current review of Aotearoa New Zealand’s ‘official’ presence at the Venice Biennale, HUM invited responses from New Zealanders on- and off-shore who have visited or been involved in ‘New Zealand at Venice’ projects, as artists, pavilion attendants, exhibition installers or designers, to enable insights into how involvement in (or experience of) our previous national pavilions have influenced people’s own careers, and the profile of contemporary art from Aotearoa.
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
documenta fifteen or lumbung one?
By Bruce E. Phillips
12.08.2022
For documenta fifteen, the arts collective FAFSWAG were invited to participate as members of the lumbung process established by this year’s curatorial collective ruangrupa. In the absence of the trophy artist phenomenon so entrenched within mega-exhibitions, Bruce E. Phillips responds to the work of different participating collectives exhibiting in Kassel and discusses how introducing a non-European exhibition-making concept into the heart of arguably Europe’s most revered art event was bound to confound those unwilling to consider a differing perspective.
