Māori
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.
Calendar
Alicia Frankovich, Brett Graham and Sorawit Songsataya, The Charge That Binds
07 December 2024 —
16 March 2025
ACCA, Naarm Melbourne, Australia
Calendar
5 Aotearoa artists and 1 collective, Hawai‘i Triennial 2025 (HT25)
05 February —
04 May 2025
Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawai‘i
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
James Webster, Musée de la Musique
20 May —
31 August 2025
Musée de la Musique, Cité de la Musique, Paris, France
Calendar
Abigail Aroha Jensen, Gasworks Residency
06 October —
22 December 2025
Gasworks, London, UK
Calendar
Lisa Reihana, Ngununggula Inaugural International Exhibition
06 September —
09 November 2025
Ngununggula, Bowral, Australia
Calendar
Moniek Schrijer, Warwick Freeman, Neke Moa, Stevei Houkāmau and Sofia Tekela-Smith, Munich Jewellery Week, curated Karl Chitham
12 March —
16 March 2025
Various locations around Munich, Germany
Calendar
Ariana Tikao, Cafe OTO
27 July 2025
Cafe OTO, London, UK
Calendar
Luke Willis Thompson, Yes, Germany voted in favor of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) when it was adopted by the General Assembly on September 13, 2007.
13 June —
30 August 2025
Nagel Draxler Kabinett, Berlin, Germany
Calendar
Raukura Turei and Ruth Ige, São Paulo Biennial
06 September 2025 —
11 January 2026
Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, São Paulo, Brazil
Calendar
Sarah Hudson, Reconciliation, Setouchi Triennale
18 April —
09 November 2025
Megijima, Seto Inland Sea, Japan
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
8 Aotearoa artists and 1 collective, Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry (SB16), co-curated by Megan Tamati-Quennell
06 February —
16 June 2025
Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
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
Erena Baker Arapere and Rychèl Thérin Scott, DESCANSOS (We die 1000 deaths)
09 November —
15 November 2024
Glasgalerie, Vienna, Austria
Calendar
Lisa Reihana and Jasmine Togo-Brisby, Bangkok Art Biennale 2024: Nurture Gaia
24 October 2024 —
25 February 2025
various venues across Bangkok, Thailand
Calendar
Vidéo Club New Zealand, Takiwā Hou: Imagining New Spaces
11 October 2024 —
12 January 2025
FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France
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
Busan Biennale 2024: Seeing in the Dark
17 August —
20 October 2024
various locations in Busan, South Korea
Calendar
Deep Material Energy (DME III)
14 September —
16 November 2024
RMIT Galley, Naarm Melbourne, Australia
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.