Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis. Background artwork: Māramatanga by Lisa Reihana. Photo: Chris Loufte
A 600-page new book that took 12 years to create is set to reframe the history of Māori art.
Toi Te Mana (Auckland University Press) brings together work from Māori artists and museums from around the globe, ranging from Polynesia voyaging waka to contemporary Māori art, from body adornment and carving to street art and moving image.
Brett Graham, Maungārongo ki te Whenua Maungārongo ki te Tangata, 2020. The work appeared at the 2024 Venice Biennale Photo: Copyright: the artist's estate
Academic Peter Brunt observes that Toi Te Mana “challenges us to reconceive the entire narrative of art and modernity from the perspective of indigenous cultures worldwide”. It addresses what another historian Roger Blackley once called, in relation to the treatment of Māori art, “an unofficial apartheid”.
Toi Te Mana is a whopper of a book, but it’s also beautiful and very readable.
Papahou. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, E 1908.94 Photo: University of Cambridge
Rangi Kipa and Zach Challies, Tiki Aahua, 2023, UV-cured polymer resin, mother of pearl Photo: Sam Hartnett
It’s packed with colour images and lively accessible breakout texts on different topics from its writers: art historians and curators Deidre Brown, Ngarino Ellis and the late Jonathan Mane-Wheoki. The book has been designed by Ngāi Tahu artist Neil Pardington and features a distinctive Rangi Kipa (Te Ati Awa) hei tiki on the front cover.
A key influence on Brown and Ellis, Mane-Wheoki (Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī) was there with vision at the beginning of the book’s writing, contributing some chapters and strengthening resolve to connect many strands of Toi Māori that had sometimes become disconnected from each other.
Artists Cliff Whiting (left) and Paratene Matchitt in discussion during the installation of Contemporary Maori Painting and Sculpture (1966), St Paul’s Methodist Centre, Hamilton Photo: Archives New Zealand, AAQT 6539 A8194
In many cases the research is only just starting, with Toi Te Mana representing an important beginning to a new Aotearoa art history.
Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Porou) is associate professor of art history at Waipapa Taumatua Rau University of Auckland and remains the only Māori teaching art history full-time in a New Zealand university.
Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) is a professor of architecture at the same university. In 2019, she became the first indigenous woman in the world to head a School of Architecture.
They joined us on RNZ’s Culture 101.
MP Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan (second from left) was a leader in contemporary Māori fashion. Here outside Parliament in 1975, receiving Whina Cooper’s hīkoi. Photo: John Miller
