Loose mound of Kōkōwai collected from Ngāti Rakaipaaka rohe, incased in a Wardian Case. Depicting Rongomaiwahine.
The mana of Rongomaiwahine is well-known throughout Te Ao Māori, talk of her beauty and leadership of her people spread around the motu. Her descendants from her relationship with the equally prominent leader Kahungunu populated most of Wairoa, Hawkes Bay to the Wairarapa. This included her grandson, my ancestor Rakaipaaka, who our iwi Ngāti Rakaipaaka are named after. Having such a strong line of wāhine in my whakapapa is something I want to ensure my whānau remember and share.
I first created this piece immediately in response to Maōri Party MP Rawiri Waititi being thrown out of Parliament chambers due to wearing his beloved hei tiki instead of a tie. And a social media post made later that day by Labour Party MP Tamati Coffey, where he made a very colonised response to Waititi’s refusal to wear a tie. A hei tiki is a representation of ones ancestor, a tie is a piece of fabric. It is disgusting to me that Māori are still having to conform on our own lands to the colonised views of the settler government. Sadly, this is every day life in a racist NZ. But, what hurt me more on that day was seeing another Māori feel the need to further belittle Waititi for standing up for our people, and being so colonised himself they he didn’t even realise.
Tamati, it was never just about a tie.
This piece was acknowledged as a finalist with an Honourable Mention at the inaugural Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Awards exhibited at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery.
Photographic art print now in the Wellington City Council City Art collection.
Limited edition photographic art prints of this work are available now in online shop
Read an article in Stuff about the awards
or read the below kōrero by Brooke Pou
“Māori reddened their korero, speech, in ways both metaphoric and specific; red colours crept into their faces as well as their words.” (12)
Brooke Pou
This quote, taken from “A Red Thread” in Tessa Laird’s Rainbow Reader, describes the importance that the colour red has in te ao Māori. The reddening of kōrero is later detailed by Laird when she discusses the various words for red in te reo Māori. It is true that red can be seen in faces and words.
In a New Zealand Geographic article by Gerard Hindmarsh titled “Make-up with Mud” the way that Māori traditionally used red to decorate their bodies is explored. There were visual, practical, and spiritual reasons for incorporating kōkōwai into bodily adornments. As with many cultures in Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, red is a tapu colour. When mixed together with shark liver oil and put on the human body, kōkōwai is a mark of high status. It was also “an effective sandfly repellent” and “had the advantage of keeping away the dreaded patupaiarehe, or fairy folk.”1
Today, red remains a significant colour to Māori. It plays a key role in the Tino Rangatiratanga flag, whare whakairo, and contemporary art. Tessa Williams is a Māori artist whose work exemplifies the ways in which wāhine connect to whenua. A guiding concept in her art is how Papatūānuku connects wāhine to the land. Red can symbolise a lot, but in Williams’ work #ItsNotAboutATie, it can be seen as the embodiment of Papatūānuku and Hineahuone. In Māori mythology, the sky father, Ranginui resides in the heavens, while Papatūānuku (earth mother) was forced to the land below. One of their sons, Tāne Mahuta, created the first human woman (Hineahuone) from clay.
1 Gerard Hindmarsh, “Makeup with Mud” in New Zealand Geographic, accessed 18 July 2021, https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/make-up-with-mud/.
#ItsNotAboutATie is a portrait of Williams’ tupuna, Rongomaiwahine. In using finely ground, loose kōkōwai, Williams references her tupuna as well as Papatūānuku and Hineahuone. Her atua are represented in the dark, rich, earthly red tone that has been gathered from her papakāinga. The medium is therefore spiritually important, as well as being ephemeral. As the work travels, it will need to be dismantled and remade time and again. The exact form will never be replicated, never perfected, but always changing- as humans do. The pigment has been imprinted with a hei tiki. Among the various meanings of this form are an emblem of tupuna and a representation of Hineteiwaiwa. This is yet another layer to Williams’ work portraying her female tupuna.
Whenua is a word like whero, with multiple meanings. It is both land and placenta. In te ao Māori, the strong links between wāhine and land are seen in the traditional ceremony of burying whenua in whenua. The significance of being forever linked to and at one with our homeland is intrinsically connected to Papatūānuku and Hineahuone. I spent a lot of time with the forty-nine artworks in the inaugural Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award exhibition, as an observer and a gallery host. I got to hear many artists give talks about their works, but the one that my mind returns to time and again is #ItsNotAboutATie.
TOI BY TESSA 