WHAKAAHUA WHAKAPAPA | Te Tauranga Toi

Whakaahua Whakapapa - Genealogical Portraits

July 13, 2023

Te Tauranga Toi’s inaugural online exhibition probes technological image capture and production, for their potential to present whakaahua Māori

Curated by Julie Paama-Pengelly

Whakaahua whakapapa - Genealogical portraits
curated by Julie Paama-Pengelly

In te reo Māori whakaahua, equates to portrait so you break that down whaka - meaning to cause, and āhua - to create something that describes the āhua, the nature, the personality and story of a person. Whakapapa translates as placing in layers, or laying one upon another, and serves to mean genealogy, lineage, descent, through the process of layering successive ancestors as the foundation of who you are as a Māori and is central to Māori identity.1

Until the 1890’s Māori distrusted photography due to its perceived ‘magical’ properties and a fear that the mauri (life force) of the sitter would somehow be adversely altered or diminished through the capture process.2 Māori eventually embraced photography for that same very perception that the mauri (life force) of the person might be present. Framed photographic portraits became common place around the deceased at tangihanga (funerals) to eventually be hung in the wharenui (meeting house) as memorial to them with others who had passed and alongside customary whakairo (carvings) considered to be ‘symbolic manifestations of tribal genealogies.

Whakaahua Whakapapa - Genealogical Portraits
July 13, 2023

Te Tauranga Toi’s inaugural online exhibition probes technological image capture and production, for their potential to present whakaahua Māori.

View the artwork

About the curator

Whakaahua whakapapa - Genealogical portraits
curated by Julie Paama-Pengelly

In te reo Māori whakaahua, equates to portrait so you break that down whaka - meaning to cause, and āhua - to create something that describes the āhua, the nature, the personality and story of a person. Whakapapa translates as placing in layers, or laying one upon another, and serves to mean genealogy, lineage, descent, through the process of layering successive ancestors as the foundation of who you are as a Māori and is central to Māori identity.1

Until the 1890’s Māori distrusted photography due to its perceived ‘magical’ properties and a fear that the mauri (life force) of the sitter would somehow be adversely altered or diminished through the capture process.2 Māori eventually embraced photography for that same very perception that the mauri (life force) of the person might be present. Framed photographic portraits became common place around the deceased at tangihanga (funerals) to eventually be hung in the wharenui (meeting house) as memorial to them with others who had passed and alongside customary whakairo (carvings) considered to be ‘symbolic manifestations of tribal genealogies.

Since 2000 Māori artists have embraced photography and digital media as tools to probe misrepresentations of themselves, flipping western histories of portrait capture that have cast the ethnocentric gaze upon Māori, while exploring deeper connotations of ‘portrait’ as an ‘artistic representation of people’.

In light of the exponential growth of technology it is no surprise that Māori creatives are just as rapidly finding ways to recolonise these spaces and invert the dominant narrative. The recent Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award 2023 may have confused many who have grown to expect portraits to be presented in the western realism genre, or if not this at least a likeness of the person. Lisa Reihana, a Māori artist who has built a stellar career on digital media, says "As a group of judges we were very clear that we wanted people to imagine their tūpuna in many different ways."3

The winning work Kia Whakatōmuri te haere whakamua, by Stevei Haukāmau, a mihi to her ancestress Hinemaurea, looks nothing like a traditional European portrait, instead a large chain of carved beads made of uku (clay) drapes itself along the gallery wall representing the links of her whakapapa.

Whakaahua Whakapapa features the four inaugural artists of Te Tauranga Toi, Kereama Taepa, Joe Houia, Maraea Timutimu and Julie Paama-Pengelly as they probe technological image capture and production for its potentialities to present whakaahua Māori - Māori portraits, in more meaningful and often complex ways.

Te hā o Hine-ahu-one the dignity and power of women, by Julie Paama-Pengelly is a tribute to women as child-bearers of whakapapa. As a digital piece presented in an acrylic medium the work blends both the artificial or new intelligences to reference an age-old process of body marking. Featuring exploratory designs from the artist's practice of tā moko or customary Maori tattoo, a practice she began over thirty years ago, the tattoo piece is entirely imagined from ideas both completed and not yet realised.

Tā moko had a strong pre-european history, undergoing a transformational revival in the late 1980s and has exponentially evolved since, with the adoption of new tools that has allowed (much as steel tools did for whakairo) the blossoming of artist styles and vocabulary. The acrylic presentation is almost a cleansing of what historically was so private and tapu, referencing the transformations that tā moko has made to reclaim a place of pride within society today.

"As women struggle through the imposed colonial patriarchy adopted by many of our men, Tā moko becomes her armour”. As Jule explains “My design and practice has gone through extreme challenges and changes over a period of time but in order to meet those challenges I say to myself I am Hineahuone, the life giver to my children and of moko-ā-wāhine, I have already modelled transformation through the whakapapa within my belly, and my work must continue forward”

Kereama Taepas Tiki 13.1 the colourful abstraction of whakairo forms filled with pākati or notched surface design derived from the adidas logo is from his Whekehiko (electric octopus) open series that explores digitally 3D-modelled "whakairo", presented as two-dimensional printed portraits. A novel way of approaching carved traditions of tiki as ancestral representations, the digital tools engage a workflow that involve the creation of many ‘layers’ that all go towards building the final image rendered, so real it could believably exist.

"Indigenous names have always been interesting to me. I’ve learnt that some indigenous cultures have multiple names for an individual - a name is given at different stages or moments within their life. The intent of the tiki series is that people purchase from the selection and give the work a name - after an ancestor/person/thing/phenomenon that they are wanting the work to represent'' says the artist. The works also provide an accessible alternative to whakairo work that is usually more expensive.

New tech also brings new language and Kereama has coined the phrase whakapī for 3D printing - referencing the honey bee that layers up wax to build up its hive. Whakapī also extends to other digital works and artists that create through the building of layers - a fundamental principle that is carried across digital applications across all creative practices.

He kāwai whenua, He kāwai whakapapa, a series of works by Maraea Timutimu gives grand presence to a totemic composition of stones and rocks that stand majestic against their black background. Collected from the waterways of her maternal and paternal kāinga at Matapihi, Tauranga Moana, and Rūātoki, Eastern Bay of Plenty they stand in for people and places that are important to her and address the centrality of whenua, as tangible connectors to Māori stories, histories, identities and whakapapa.

"When we view whenua in its natural state, we see that it is made up of layers, the natural pigments of Papatūānuku (mother earth) connecting it to place and time. It depicts us and the makeup of our individual genealogy” says Maraea.4 The earth constructed over time, is both the whakapapa of her ancestors' habitation and homage to our greatest ancestress Papatūānuku, the earth mother.

The work Poutini by Joe Houia, is his digital homage to the ancestor of pounamu. The story goes that Poutini once abducted a woman, Waitaiki, from the North Island and fled south pursued by her husband. He hid with his captive in the bed of the Arahura River but Waitaiki's husband pursued them. Poutini transformed Waitaiki into his own spiritual essence, pounamu, and fled down river to the sea.

Joe represents a generation raised into digital tools. The new pen and paper, these digital drawing tools become a natural part of the process the artist engages to visualise the forms he will carve into pounamu, wood and bone and to design work to apply as tā moko. In applying noted features of Poutini, his body presented as a mere, a forked tongue to express conflicting stories around the abduction of Waitiaki and his relationship to Tangaroa in blue, Joe is placing himself within the whakapapa, along with his customary art practices of tā moko and whakairo that are enhanced by digital tools and media.