A passing Conversation

A critical kōrero about self-discovery and navigation displayed within a collection that disrupts the common visual language associated with Māori aesthetic.

Growing up in Auckland suburbs, away from my Whakapapa I have always felt a disconnect with my culture, which was only ever emphasized throughout my life by others with comments regarding the colour of my skin. The older I got the harder I found it navigating being white and Māori at the same time, I never felt as if I fit into spaces created for either party nor did I feel as if there were spaces to talk about these difficulties with people in similar positions to me.

Through the brief: Tautoko and Tuakiri I have taken this opportunity to learn more about who and where I come from, and to be kinder to my past self for not learning these things sooner. We should be acknowledging that disconnect many of us are being raised with - away from our Iwi, our Marae. Many have struggled to make the connection while growing up in environments with a heavy Western culture and have felt too ashamed to reach out for clarity with the worry of being labeled not Māori enough for not knowing what they “should know” already.

Through research for this project, I have learned that there are many people in the same position as myself, many not able to or comfortable talking about the difficulties of it all. With my surface design collection, I wanted to address these issues and initiate a korero that I believe we need to be having more frequently.  While doing this I have taken inspiration from Ikuntjui artists and how many of them take stories from their upbringing and turn them into bold graphic prints. With help from my family, their stories, and experiences as well as my own this project tells a story of navigation a little less ‘traditional’ than most. We throw around the term traditional quite frequently when talking about Maori art and design. The term tradition tends to always reference the old, the authentic, the stereotypical visuals we would associate within a culture. People talk about “traditional” art and practices as if they are somehow pure and untouched, but with colonization the possibility of that being feasible is unlikely. Maori culture is not static, it is like many, dynamic and constantly growing and changing with the people and world around it, and the term traditional tends to have implications that can take us back in time a little.  (Mallon)

The style of work I have created clearly doesn’t follow a step-by-step guide of what should be considered Maori-looking and so should this mean my work is less authentic and that the stories I am telling about my whakapapa are not as valuable as others working with deep reds, white and black, and kowhaiwhai?
​​​​​​​

Mallon, Sean. “Against Tradition.” The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 22, no. 2, 2010, pp. 362–81.