Māori art makes waves in Venice

Monday, 10 June 2024

The feat of winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale cannot be overstated.

This year, the top prize at the 60th contemporary visual art exhibition went to the four wāhine Māori that make up New Zealand’s Mataaho Collective ‒ Bridget Reweti, Erena Baker, Sarah Hudson and Terri Te Tau.

It’s the first time New Zealand has won the award for best participant in the international exhibition, which features artists from more than 75 countries.

“That was a massive surprise. We were pinching ourselves to even be invited to show at the Venice Biennale, to come home with a Golden Lion is out of this world,” the collective told The Post in a joint statement.

“It feels good to be able to bolster weaving on the contemporary art scene ‒ there is an art versus craft debate when it comes to weavers. We see weavers and carvers as installation artists, their work tells our stories, delineates and defines our spaces ‒ how we move, where we sit, what the occasion is.”

Their large scale work that features in Italy, Takapau, which was previously shown at Te Papa in Wellington, is made from 6km of woven polyester hi-vis tie downs, stainless steel buckles and rachets.

Takapau opens the Arsenale section of the biennale, and serves as a gateway to the rest of the group exhibition titled Stranieri Ovunque ‒ Foreigners Everywhere, curated by artistic director Adriano Pedrosa.

Alongside Mataaho Collective, Māori artists Sandy Adsett, father and son Fred and Brett Graham and the late Selwyn Wilson are also showing work at the biennale.

Mataaho Collective says: “We're honoured to be showing with Māori artists who we have learned from and who have dedicated their lives to carrying and innovating our cultural practices. We felt this whakapapa connection to their work and of other indigenous artists while we were overseas ‒ we are in great company.

“Our contemporary woven work was right next door to Brett [Graham]’s work Wasteland. Having the opportunity to show Takapau alongside Brett's contemporary carving, and multiple generations of toi Māori artists represented in the Venice Biennale felt like a special moment.”

The collective says they wouldn’t be where they are without the support of teachers and mentors like Bob Jahnke, who guided them as art students and into their careers, and Dr Maureen Lander, who pushed the way they use light as a medium and encouraged the exploration of materials.

With weaving being all about whakapapa, Takapau is in some ways a giant metaphor for the variety in perspectives from multiple generations of Māori artists being shared at Venice.

Takapau came from the group researching whāriki (ceremonial mats) in the Te Papa collection.

“Whāriki are big projects, they can be created by many hands and have the power to change the energy of a space. Everyday mats are neutral ‒ but ceremonial mats can hold life changing moments of births, deaths and marriages. We wanted to tension our whāriki across the room so it could be viewed from above and below. The result is quite architectural, with the light filtering through the weaving it feels like you’re inside a woven structure, womb-like,” the collective said.

The jury for the Golden Lion prize described the structure as a feat of engineering only possible because of the collective strength and creativity of the group.

Sandy Adsett, whose 1978 acrylic oil on board Waipuna is on show at the Giardini central pavilion, said it came as a surprise to find out that Pedrosa wanted a work of his to go on display.

Around the time Waipuna was made, Adsett was exploring kōwhaiwhai (traditional Māori motifs and patterns). He said he’d always wanted to keep Māori stories within his work, but in the 1980s there was criticism of Māori art as being heathen: “Our artwork was not seen as art as such … it was something that was ignored. I still feel that way,” he told The Post.

Hence why the group of Māori artists showing at this year’s biennale is so significant. Adsett says the weaving patterns in Mataaho’s Takapau are continuations of techniques used by older Māori artists including himself. But there was an irony in Māori art being lauded on the world stage when it had at times been under appreciated in New Zealand.

“I’m totally comfortable with the make up of the group [in Venice], because the focus is on our art,” Adsett said. “They identify as Māori. Their work is Māori. So we are here representing our culture. I'm pleased that I'm able to support a present day statement about our art form … It’s interesting that our ‘heathen’ artwork is featuring.”

The different Māori artists showing at Venice also illustrate the evolution of Māori art through generations.

“Each generation makes a change, but they've got to build up from something. … Each generation has to share that same knowledge with a generation ahead of them, but also say where they got it from. [That’s] what I believe is the traditional construct of our art,” Adsett said.

In a joint phone interview with his father, Brett Graham told The Post that Foreigners Everywhere focuses on marginalised communities and the ideas of the stranger, the foreigner, the queer and the indigenous.

Brazilian curator Pedrosa is the first ever from the southern hemisphere, and in making Foreigners Everywhere tried to redress the biennale’s own history in omitting participating artists over the years from outside Europe and the northern hemisphere.

As a result many artists from South America and the Pacific were included in this year’s international exhibition, about half of them are dead and many won’t be well known outside their own countries. Sub-themes of the exhibition include familial relationships that are often important in traditional and indigenous societies ‒ hence Pedrosa’s interest in having the Graham father-son duo exhibit together. Pedrosa wanted Brett Graham to make a new work that responded to his father’s art.

The result is his Wasteland, which Brett describes as an exploration of how European settlers destroyed wetlands and valuable food sources like eels, and removed Māori populations to create pasture land for themselves. He said it venerates nature.

Fred Graham, meanwhile, has several sculptures and a painting on show in the Arsenale near his son’s work: Tamariki a Tangaroa (1970), Maui Steals the Sun (1971), Tinirau and the Whale (1971) and Whiti Te Rā (1966). In making those works years ago, he said he wanted to retell traditional Māori stories and legends in new visual forms.

The late Selwyn Wilson’s portrait Study of a head (1948) is also on display in the Giardini central pavilion.

In addition to the international exhibition, New Zealanders Areez Katki, Caitlin Devoy, Elisapeta Hinemoa Heta, Mizuho Nishioka and Robert Jahnke are also showing in Venice as part of presentations that run parallel to the biennale.

Auckland Art Gallery senior curator of Māori art Nathan Pōhio said the inclusion of Māori artists was significant. “Artists of te ao Māori (the Māori world) placed within the context of their global peers is becoming a less rare occasion. This is great considering what Māori art has to offer the world.”

Brett said his father and Adsett were the last artists of a generation and their work had not been given its due in New Zealand, and it was incredibly special to exhibit overseas alongside his dad.

“New Zealand has never had such a strong presence in the Arsenale … It's a fantastic moment for New Zealand and also Australia,” Brett Graham said. (Australia also won its first Golden Lion for best national participation, for artist Archie Moore’s kith and kin).

“The focus of the art world is on the Antipodes right now because of that, so it's a great moment for us. … To have that visibility in that environment is phenomenal.”

• The Biennale Arte 2024 runs to November.