'Taihoa': The Māori word that transforms your creative process

Tuesday, 21 July 2026

For Hēmi Kelly, creativity is more than just an artistic output; it’s a necessary escape, a form of therapy, and a collaborative process deeply rooted in te ao Māori. Whether it’s embracing tākaro (play) to break down feelings of whakamā (embarrassment), or simply remembering the power of saying 'taihoa' (wait) to give ourselves space to breathe, Kelly believes Aotearoa is a budding creative nation just beginning to realize its potential.

Question: What is your earliest memory of creativity?

Hēmi Kelly: Me and my sister would build little houses in the lounge and then occupy them for the day. They’d be made out of whatever we could get our hands on. My mum had a collection of old woollen blankets.

I can see the images on these blankets. They remind me of my mum, my Nana, of growing up in a simple home where we would make something out of whatever we could get our hands on.

Have you had an unforgettable creative experience?

teamLab in Japan just blew my mind. Walking through these different spaces, and each space activates a different sense: smell, sight, touch, hearing. That really was an out-of-this-world creative experience.

Do you have a creative pastime?

Composing. I’ve always had an obsession with Māori words. When I started learning te reo Māori, the way I would output what was coming in was by writing poems, and that grew into writing waiata and haka.

When I compose, it’s because I have some sort of reaction to something I’ve seen or heard. When I was living overseas for some time, I had this feeling of being homesick, so that waiata composition is wrapped around that feeling. Another might be wrapped around some sort of angry feeling, if it’s a waiata of protest. Every composition has a very different feeling.

Is there something in your creative process that you think people should know about?

I can get lost in the composition for days. It doesn’t mean I’m sitting alone in a room, but it can occupy my thoughts. There’s an escape from Te Ao Mārama, and you enter another realm.

It encourages you to think differently, it encourages you to ask questions, it encourages you to talk to other people and share what you’ve created. It’s like therapy. It’s getting away from the everyday mundane stuff, our habits. Your brain enters another space. That’s what it is for me.

What can you tell us about bringing your craft into a hugely creative project like Lorde’s Te Ao Mārama EP?

It was so exciting to work with Lorde, not just with Ella but Sir Tīmoti Kāretu, with Hinewehi Mohi, and Hana Mereraiha. It was a collaboration between us to create those five waiata in te reo Māori - sitting down, doing it the proper way through wānanga, through conversation..

We saw people fall in love with it, we saw people be a little bit uncomfortable with it, for different reasons. But that’s what art is.

The most exciting thing was putting our reo out into the world on a level we hadn’t seen before, where it was going global in that space, with people that have inspired me.

Do you think of Aotearoa as a creative country?

We are a budding creative country. We have so much potential, and we’re just starting to realise that.

I’m seeing our creativity in spaces where I don’t think it really was visible before. It’s no longer just being reserved for one place or one group. I’m seeing it on the footpaths, in our buildings and installations, outside in our parks.

Why is play in creativity good for us?

When we play, we let down all of those inhibitions, or feelings of being embarrassed or whakamā. We naturally engage as we do when we’re with our friends and those people we’re most comfortable with.

Sometimes when we’re in a learning space with new people, it can be a little bit tense. We still have this wall up and we don’t want to show that we may not know something, or we don’t want to ask a question because no one else is asking that question.

But when we start to play, and we might do an icebreaker or a round of some game, it really does let people engage naturally and feel comfortable.

How can play inspire creativity?

When you’re in that space of tākaro or wānanga, you’re bouncing ideas off each other. I don’t think anything that I’ve created has come from me alone. It’s come from me sharing an idea with someone, testing it out with them, getting feedback, and then developing it further. That’s a really important part of creativity.

What is a creative moment that made us as a country?

The signing of the Māori Language Petition and presenting that to Parliament in 1972 to include te reo Māori in the school curriculum.

People went out into the streets, and went and knocked on doors. They stood at the train station in Wellington and asked people to sign this petition. They got 30,000 signatures before taking that to the steps of Parliament and presenting it to our government. That defined the shape of Aotearoa and our language.

What’s a creative moment that made you?

I studied Māori visual arts. I did a four-year degree, and I majored in painting. Not many people know this about me.

Growing up hearing lots of stories about my great-grandfather who was a painter and a sculptor, I always had this real curiosity for art. Not pretty art. He would paint things that were dull. He was known for painting flowers that were dead and wilting.

He had this different way of looking at things, and he had this beautiful quote. Essentially it says that art is in the eye of the beholder, and I think that’s very true. We all like different things. We all have different things that turn us on aesthetically.

How would you encourage New Zealanders to get more creativity into their lives?

With te reo, learn at least one word a day. I think that’s something that we can all do. The creative part is trying to incorporate it into your life, finding those opportunities with people and places we can use that word.

What’s one kupu Māori you’d recommend people start with?

‘Taihoa’ means to wait. That’s one word we need to say to each other every now and then. “Just give me a second, hold on. Taihoa.”

With Matariki rising, or Puanga if that’s where we are, what is a creative intention you could set for the new year?

It’s a very personal thing. A creative intention for me is about how I present myself. It comes in different colours, and different shapes and different sizes. Jewellery, pounamu, hei tiki. I’ve really enjoyed embracing that more.

That’s my physical display of creativity as I walk in the world. I want to think about that a little bit more in the year ahead.

We use ‘auahatia’ as a rallying cry for creativity. How would you teach this kupu?

‘Auaha’ is the verb: to create something. It can also be used as an imperative. If you want to tell someone to create something, we need to add the passive ending onto the verb: ‘tia’.

You’re telling someone to create. “Auahatia!”

Creativity is for everyone. What’s your way in? Explore more at creativitymakesus.nz and check out their Instagram.