whatu works
2019-2021
Hinekura Smith frames Whatuora as a methodology which “helps us to see ourselves, our past experiences and possible future through decolonising eyes. A Whatuora approach… insists that we actively reclaim and restore, unpick and re-weave, a culturally well and clear vision of our present realities and, importantly, create a vision for the future.”1 There is both tension and wonder in learning about oneself through museums and archives, which hold our ancestors’ taonga but rarely their voices. We must come to know our tūpuna wāhine in other ways.
As we both begin the long, slow process of learning to weave, we are in conversation not only with each other, but also with our tūpuna wāhine in te whare pora. In whatuora, we hīkoi to a place our ancestors were simultaneously, Kororāreka. Through kōrerorero, we tease out the threads that brought us together, our connection to whenua as descendants of settler-indigenous relationships, and our belonging to place as women whose ancestors moved across oceans and brought – or left behind – their stories and traditions.
We have shared a studio and worked alongside each other for the past year. Our practices have been influenced by this relationship: sometimes converging, always buoying. Whatuora is the first of three parts, a beginning point, from which reciprocal practices and shared haerenga will unfold over several months. Together, we reflect on the passing down of knowledge, the repairing of ruptures, and the bridging of time.
1 Smith, Hinekura. "Whatuora: Theorizing “New” Indigenous Methodology from “Old” Indigenous Weaving Practice." Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal 4, no. 1 (2019): 1-27. http://dx.doi.org/10.18432/ari29393.
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whatu aho rua, the teina of whatuora, is multiple returns. We journey once more to the places tethering our practices and our selves over the last year: Karekare, Taranaki, Tauranga Moana, Karekare again. Whatu aho rua is gratitude to our tūpuna for their guidance. It is nurturing our wairua, it is finding connection across distances and it is honouring our multiplicity, the many worlds we weave through. It is the closing of a circle, so we may begin another.
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Emily Parr, Whakamārama: dusk/dawn (Tauranga Moana) (2021). Digital video and sound, 1m.
Whakamārama: dusk/dawn (Tauranga Moana) was made for Whānau Mārama, a Matariki project led by Jade Townsend in 2021. The work observes the setting and rising of the sun, acknowledging the cyclical rhythms of Matariki and te taiao. The two moving-images layered through tāniko patterns were filmed on the same stretch of beach in Tauranga Moana at both dusk and dawn. The tāniko patterns — waharua kōpito, aronui and whetū — reference my reconnection with whakapapa, my ancestors’ migration across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, and the Matariki cluster. The work honours Hine-te-iwaiwa, atua wahine of both fertility and weaving, and my tūpuna wāhine.
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