Unearthed

This exhibition is a gift to my grandmother, Riparata Ramarihi — a proud Te Arawa, Ngāti Whakaue Māori woman.
I was seven when we last spoke, and she passed away soon after. The three works in this exhibition continue that final conversation with her — a quiet and respectful dialogue across generations.
In these works, I reflect on her life and struggles as an Indigenous Māori woman navigating post-colonial Aotearoa while trying to remain connected to her whakapapa and whenua. Her experiences and trauma have deeply shaped my mother and, in turn, all of us as her children.
Through this conversation, I begin a journey of return — to listen, to reconcile, and to find a way forward as an Indigenous Māori man living between two cultures.

The body of work consists of three main expressions — Unearthed, Te Waka, and Wayfind. Each piece is deeply personal, in which the elements become both literal and metaphorical: a manifestation of the inner world, and each represents a distinct part of the same conversation, connected to the others.

Unearthed is an organic, grassroots textile that speaks to the reactivation of memory. Over several months, I nurtured and tended to the wheat grass as if caring for my grandmother herself. The textile rests on the floor, grounded to the earth below. The names of my ancestors are transcribed in a concrete poetic form and inscribed on the floor around the textile as a mark of respect and remembrance— as if to say, I see you and will not forget.
As the roots grew down into the soil, so too did my memories of her take root. The resulting textile is fragmented and seemingly random, yet it mirrors the organic process of exploring the past — an acknowledgment that we are each the sum of many parts and cultures.

Te Waka, suspended in space above Unearthed, is a skeletal interpretation of our ancestral Te Arawa canoe — a reminder of my whakapapa, the journey to Aotearoa, and the voyage that lies ahead. Constructed from ply, pine, and bamboo, Te Waka commands attention through its scale, yet its light frame speaks softly of the great migration stories of the Te Arawa chief Tamatekapua, who voyaged to Aotearoa from the South Polynesian islands in the early 1400s. Looking to the future, I am Te Waka — a vessel carrying forward the cultural knowledge of the past, navigating between the vast, turbulent sky above and the deep ocean below, between Indigenous Māori and post-colonial worlds.

Wayfind is a speculative map for the future. Like the great Polynesian navigators, who read the stars and ocean currents to guide their waka from South Polynesia to Aotearoa, this work draws on ancestral knowledge to navigate what lies ahead. Made from bamboo and pāua shell, the map is both conceptual and metaphorical. The shells mark the important points and people in my life, while the bamboo lines trace the connections and pathways between cultural worlds.

This body of work is a quiet conversation with the past, held in the present, to imagine a way forward. Like many Māori men, I live between worlds — negotiating the pull of post-colonial systems and the deep call of cultural identity. Government policies have long encouraged Māori to move to the cities for work, but this migration has often led to disconnection from land, language, and ancestral knowledge.
My art practice seeks to bridge these worlds — to help shift Māori culture into contemporary expression while honouring its spiritual depth, its respect for whānau, and its connection to whenua. This, I believe, is what my grandmother, Riparata Ramarihi, would have wanted.