Waitirohia

Ko Waitirohia pupu rere ana ki Ngā Nuhaka te awa. Ko Ngāti Rakaipaaka te iwi.

Written by Brooke Pou, “Waitirohia by Tessa Russell features a new series of engraved vintage mirrors that are a tribute to a moment – the very first time the artist saw her reflection after receiving her moko kauae. According to Russell, that moment in the mirror “changed everything.” For so long she felt out of place in her own skin, but when she looked into that mirror, she saw someone she recognised but had never met. She saw her tūpuna. She saw herself.

In our country’s pre-colonial period, when wāhine mau moko kauae were the norm and not the exception and before tūpuna Māori had mirrors, they would often look into the wai through a river or lake to see their reflection. For wāhine mau moko, this would have been the only way to see themselves after receiving their kauae. This is a stark contrast to the way we live today, with high resolution cameras in our phones enabling us to see ourselves in an unnatural level of detail at any given moment.

Tirohia, translating to ‘inspect’ or ‘gaze upon’, offers an entirely different way of looking—slower and more purposeful. To tirohia into the wai means to acknowledge “yourself as part of the waters you are gazing into, waters that are your tūpuna.” Tūpuna Māori would, naturally, most often gaze into their own awa. It is this act of active inspection that interests Russell, who wonders how looking not only into the water, but your own water, impacts your wellbeing.

The engravings on these mirrors, much like the engraving on Russell’s skin, represent tūpuna Māori. Inspired by an exhibition of pounamu in which many hei tiki were displayed alongside the label ‘iwi unknown’, each engraved hei tiki here is an ancestor. Russell honours them by seeing them and in turn, letting them see us. In this series of artworks, these unknown ancestors have a home”.

The showing of these works at Enjoy also included more works where I make as an act of tino rangatiratanga, the ongoing 1835 series and a print from a much earlier series also called Waitirohia, links to read more about those series below.

Photographs at Enjoy by Renati Waaka