moana calling me home
2019-2020
Emily Parr, ʻOli ʻUla (2020). Digital video and sound, 12m 28s.
Emily Parr, Digging at the Roots (2020). Digital video and sound, 15m 28s.
Emily Parr, Port of Refuge (2020). Digital video and sound, 11m.
Emily Parr, Tūrangawaewae (2020). Digital video and sound, 21m 42s.
Emily Parr, Whakapaparanga (2020). Digital video and sound, 1m 50s.
Moana Calling Me Home is a series of six moving-image artworks. Seeking stories in mountains, burial places, archives, museums, and waters, the works journey to three of my ancestral homelands: Tauranga Moana in Aotearoa, Upolu in the Samoan Islands, and Tongatapu and Vavaʻu in the Kingdom of Tonga. Each story links to another, threading loops through space and time, spinning the web of relationships. Whakapapa—the placing in layers—offers a filmic language through which to connect relational fragments, while storying weaves these layers together into living narratives. Video, sound, drawings and voiceover connect seven generations, from Europe to Moana Oceania, honouring the lives of my tīpuna wāhine and strengthening our collective story. This transformational research project is a haerenga—a journey—of reconnection with whakapapa, with ancestral relationships, and with Te Moananui a Kiwa: the ocean and her islands from which these relationships emerged.