Maraea Timutimu: He kāwai whenua He kāwai whakapapa
He kāwai whenua He kāwai whakapapa addresses the centrality of whenua within mātauranga Māori and the ways it can connect us to our stories, histories, identities and whakapapa. Timutimu presents a suite of large-scale colour photographs that are a play on portraiture; stones and rocks are collected from the waterways of her maternal and paternal kāinga at Matapihi, Tauranga Moana, and Rūātoki, Eastern Bay of Plenty. They are composed into totemic forms that poetically stand in for people and places that are important to the artist.
These photographic portraits provide a unique insight into the connectedness of whenua and whakapapa through a Māori lens. “When we view whenua in its natural state, we see that it is made up of layers. These layers all have a whakapapa, derived from the natural pigments of Papatūānuku (mother earth) connecting it to place and time. It depicts us and the makeup of our individual genealogy” says Timutimu.
