Metiria Stanton Turei: Mahuika Tukaunga, 2018, Digital inkjet print; Hiwa Taniwha, 2020, Digital print on chiffon; Hine Titama, 2020, Digital inkjet print.
17 February – 11 April
Photography Gallery
Metiria Stanton Turei aspires to be an Indigenous Futurist artist. Her work is based in a Māori world as if colonisation had never occurred, that is, she has created her own tūruapō or future imaginary. This world is governed by tikanga Māori, developed in response to our changing global environment and the changing needs of whanau, hapu and iwi in the 21st century and beyond. Tikanga is not static but dynamic and progressive. It invites interrogation, boundary pushing and argument to thrive and progress. Those who share Aotearoa live within tikanga cultural norms and values, and power is exercised according to those cultural norms and values.
Within this tūruapō, Metiria makes decisions about her creative subject, materials and representations knowing that she exercises considerable agency on this creative process. Mostly her choices are designed to present a future perspective of self-determination of Māori. Her 2020 creative work Hiwa belongs within the creative Tūruapō series that she began in 2018. Tūruapō Astronesian 3000 presented an alternative narrative of Mahuika and Kurangaituku, as atua living their best lives on Autahi (Canopus) after suffering abuse at the hands of human men they had loved.
Hiwa 2020, represented in three photographs – Hiwa Pou Hiwa Taniwha and Hiwa Waharoa and three textile sculptures, is Hiwa i te Rangi, the future prosperity wishing star of the Matariki cluster. The three works show Hiwa i te Rangi at dawn, at midday and at dusk. In Metiria’s tūruapō, she is one of the atua who came in the Autahi mothership and helped move reality from Te Kore, to Te Pō, to Te Ao. She supported Papatūāuku during her transformation into the earth and like many, though not all, of the other atua, Hiwa has remained in this reality to oversee the wellbeing of iwi, hāpū and whānau Māori through the ages.
While Hiwa is an example of Metiria’s Indigenous Futurist creative choices she does sometimes look back and reflect the alternative reality of a colonised Māori world. Such was Hine Titama 2019, a work for the View from the Shore exhibition in Dunedin as part of the opposition to the Tuia 250 commemorations of the first encounter with the ship Endeavour. In Māori cosmology, Hine Titama is the first human born child who, due to trauma, eventually becomes Hine nui te Po. In Hine Titama 2019 she is reimagined as an atua who continues fighting for the return of tamariki Māori stolen by state agencies like Oranga Tamariki. Hine Titama 2019 is a work that directly talks to the impact of colonisation in Aotearoa. It may be an example of Ancestrofuturist work but she does not place her within her Tūruapō series. Hine Titama places the coloniser at the centre of the narrative in which she acts. It is through this process of moving between the tūruapō and its alternative colonised reality that Metiria is using the creative process to assist in the decolonisation of her own mind.
ABOUT METIRIA STANTON TUREI
Āti Haunui a Pāpārangi, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, Rangitane.
Metiria Stanton Turei lives in Dunedin, Aotearoa. Metiria built a career as a social activist, lawyer and member of the New Zealand Parliament over nearly 20 years before moving to develop her art practice. Her artwork focuses on Māori self-determination in the present and the future and is primarily in performative textiles, activated on the body and presented in film and photographs. She has a law degree from the University of Auckland and a BVA Honours from the Dunedin School of Art. She works for the University of Otago in the Faculty of Law and is undertaking an LLM in the Legal literacy of Māori visual art.