Indigenous

Calendar

James Webster, Musée de la Musique

20 May —
31 August 2025

Musée de la Musique, Cité de la Musique, Paris, France

Calendar

5 Aotearoa artists and 1 collective, Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 (HT25)

05 February —
04 May 2025

Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawai‘i

Calendar

Alicia Frankovich, Brett Graham and Sorawit Songsataya, The Charge That Binds

07 December 2024 —
16 March 2025

ACCA, Naarm Melbourne, Australia

Calendar

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Arts of Oceania

31 May 2025 —
01 January 2030

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, USA

Calendar

Sarah Hudson, Reconciliation, Setouchi Triennale

18 April —
09 November 2025

Megijima, Seto Inland Sea, Japan

Calendar

Kereama Taepa, Fondation Fiminco Residency

10 April —
13 June 2025

Fondation Fiminco, Paris, France

Calendar

Raukura Turei and Ruth Ige, Sāo Paulo Biennial

06 September 2025 —
11 January 2026

Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, Sāo Paulo, Brazil

Calendar

Ariana Tikao, Cafe OTO

27 July 2025

Cafe OTO, London, UK

Calendar

Lisa Reihana, Ngununggula Inaugural International Exhibition

06 September —
09 November 2025

Ngununggula, Bowral, Australia

Calendar

Taja Vaetoru: Bergman Gallery Rarotonga Residency

06 May —
07 June 2025

Bergman Gallery, Rarotonga, Cook Islands

Writing

Luke Willis Thompson in Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry

07.05.2025

In February 2025, Contemporary HUM spoke with Luke Willis Thompson from Sharjah Biennial 16 about his commissioned work Whakamoeamoeā. Set on Waitangi Day in 2040 as a public broadcast, the film imagines constitutional transformation in Aotearoa New Zealand, giving form to an Indigenous-focused dream of the future.

Writing

Te Matahiapo Collective in Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry

07.05.2025

On the occasion of Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry, Contemporary HUM speaks with Kura Puke, Inahaa Te Urutahi Waikerepuru, Stuart Foster and Mike Bridgman of the research initiative Te Matahiapo Collective. They discuss their multi-media installation work, Ā Ē Ī Ō Ū - Ī Ō Ē Ā Ū: Ko Pari Haruru (2025), and its various resonances in the Biennial and Sharjah at large as an embodied exploration of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems).

Writing

Fiona Pardington in Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry

23.04.2025

Aotearoa artist and representative for Aotearoa New Zealand at the upcoming 61st Venice Biennale (2026) Fiona Pardington talks to Contemporary HUM about her presentation of works from “Āhua: A beautiful hesitation” (2010) at Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry. In the conversation, she discusses the power of ancestral imagery beyond their capture by colonial pseudoscience, while also offering some early insights into her project for Venice.

Writing

Ana Iti in Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry

23.04.2025

In conversation with Contemporary HUM, Ana Iti reflects on her participation in Sharjah Biennial 16, following her win of the Walters Prize in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2024. She discusses what it’s been like taking the winning artwork to Sharjah and presenting it alongside earlier works, as well as the significance of taking part in her first major international presentation.

Project

Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry

In February 2025, Contemporary HUM was on the ground during the opening week of Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry, co-curated by Aotearoa curator Megan Tamati-Quennell with Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Natasha Ginwala and Zeynep Öz.

Sharjah Biennial 16 convenes under the title “to carry”, a multivocal and open-ended proposition that connects stories and traditions across generations and cultures. The five co-curators of Sharjah Biennial 16 present their projects both individually and collectively, gathering under the rubric of a single proposition: What does it entail to carry a home, ancestors and political formations with you?

Megan Tamati-Quennell’s project assembles a significant number of artists and practitioners from Aotearoa New Zealand: Albert L. Refiti, Ana Iti, Fiona Pardington, Kate Newby, Mara TK, Saffronn Te Ratana, Luke Willis Thompson, Michael Parekōwhai and Te Matahiapo Collective, whose projects collectively speak to themes of place, space and whakapapa (genealogy).

Project

Vidéo Club New Zealand, Takiwā Hou: Imagining New Spaces

Partnership

For the second international edition of “Vidéo Club”, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne in France joins forces with Te Tuhi in Aotearoa New Zealand in an exchange initiated by curator Marie Griffay and supported by Contemporary HUM.

In this exchange, FRAC presents works by three Māori moving image artists, Russ Flatt, Kahurangiariki Smith and Suzanne Tamaki, taken from Te Tuhi’s 2024 exhibition Takiwā Hou: Imagining New Spaces. These works use a variety of subject matter, including karaoke, photogrammetry and social networks, to explore Indigenous spaces and possibilities that have yet to see the light of day. Aotearoa audiences can then see works by French artists Anouk Nier-Nantes, Émilie Pierson and Marina Smorodinova, at Te Tuhi in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

Writing

And I dance into the future with the past, as a bird

By Haruko Kumakura

27.12.2024

Writing on Aotearoa New Zealand’s presentation at the 15th Gwangju Biennale, Shannon Te Ao’s Ia rā, ia rā (rere runga, rere raro) - Everyday (I fly high, I fly low) (2021), Haruko Kumakura argues that the work brings into focus what the thematic exhibition of the Biennale misses: a weaving together of the voices of the past, present and future appropriate both to the political context of its exhibition and the social and ecological urgencies of our time.

Calendar

Vidéo Club New Zealand, Takiwā Hou: Imagining New Spaces

11 October 2024 —
12 January 2025

FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France

Calendar

SaVĀge K'lub, transfeminisms Chapter IV: Care and Kinship

12 September —
26 October 2024

Mimosa House, London, UK

Calendar

Shannon Te Ao, 15th Gwangju Biennale Pavilion

07 September —
01 December 2024

Suha Gallery, Gwangju, South Korea

Writing

On truth and telling stories

By Hana Pera Aoake

04.10.2024

Aotearoa artist Hana Pera Aoake reflects on their visit to the Venice Biennale and the questions posed by its central exhibition, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere. Unearthing the fraught political contexts of Venice, Aoake asks who is really made strange by the Biennale; and whether the presenting Aotearoa artists are able to retain the specificities of place within a curatorial frame that groups categories of difference under the theme of the “stranger”.

Calendar

John Pule

12 September —
26 October 2024

Venus Over Manhattan, NYC, USA

Calendar

Katrina Iosia, Marais DigitARt

13 September —
22 September 2024

Café La Perle, Paris, France

Writing

Crossing Currents: Episode 8

By Contemporary HUM

17.08.2024

Contemporary HUM speaks with Aotearoa New Zealand artist Sandy Adsett (Ngāti Pahauwera), a pioneer in the customary artform of kōwhaiwhai and an active figure in the emergence and presentation of contemporary Māori art on the national and international scenes. He discusses being featured in the 60th International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, his experience as a teacher, and the question of the uses and future of Māori representation at events such as the Biennale.

Writing

Crossing Currents: Episode 7

By Contemporary HUM

10.08.2024

Robert Jahnke (Ngāi Taharora, Te Whānau a Iritekura, Te Whānau a Rakairo o Ngāti Porou) speaks to Contemporary HUM about his work Te Wepu MMXXIII, which is featured in the 7th edition of Personal Structures in Venice. Jahnke discusses the influence of Te Wepu, the battle flag of the 19th-century Māori prophet Te Kooti, and how the work highlights a formal whakapapa (genealogy) between Te Kooti, who was not only a religious visionary but an artistic innovator in his own right, and contemporary references to the flag, including by the late sculptor and painter Paratene Matchitt.

Writing

Crossing Currents: Episode 6

By Contemporary HUM

03.08.2024

On the occasion of an historic edition of the Venice Biennale for Aotearoa New Zealand, Contemporary HUM speaks with Mataaho Collective, who were awarded one of the top prizes at the Biennale, the Golden Lion, for their work Takapau. Mataaho Collective discuss the logistics of transforming Takapau for the Biennale, as well as working within a continuum of contemporary Māori art practice that also situates them alongside the intergenerational contingent of Māori artists presenting at this year’s Biennale. HUM also speaks with artist, writer and researcher Rychèl Thérin.