Whai Wāhi

Artists: Kura Te Waru Rewiri, Robyn Kahukiwa, Diane Prince, Emily Karaka, Te Waka Hourua, Melanie Tangaere Baldwin, Madison Kelly, John Miller, Ngataiharuru Taepa, Sky Hopinka and Inas Halabi.

Bringing together artworks from the 1970s to the present, Whai Wāhi foregrounds the voices of artists within a history of resistance to colonial disenfranchisement in Aotearoa New Zealand. The exhibition emerges as a contribution to current discussions around Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Aotearoa New Zealand’s constitutional document, and to ideas extending outward from this. In different ways, each of the works in Whai Wāhi assert the need for remembrance and resistance, and collectively, an enduring will to engage in critical dialogue about our colonial past. 

Signed in 1840 between the British Crown and over 500 rangatira Māori (chiefs), Te Tiriti o Waitangi establishes the basis for relations between Māori and the Crown, and addresses issues including land and cultural rights. This treaty remains a primary reference for artists, among others, in the ongoing negotiation of identity and relationships in Aotearoa. Anchoring the exhibition is a monumental display panel of the Treaty text, formerly installed in the national museum. The panel was redacted by activist and artist group Te Waka Hourua on December 11, 2023 in protest at its misleading English translation, which states that Māori ceded sovereignty, and at the display’s failure to sufficiently highlight the differences between the English and Māori texts and their unequal legal status. Brought into a contemporary art gallery, the panel continues its work of calling for accurate representation of Te Tiriti. 

The panel is positioned within the company of artworks that explicitly or more subtly signal dissatisfaction with the status quo, and affirm inalienable continuity of Indigenous connection to whenua (land) and tūpuna (ancestors). Among these are works by an elder generation of artists, Robyn Kahukiwa, Diane Prince, Kura Te Waru Rewiri and Emily Karaka, whose engagement with political concerns relating to the Treaty, to Māori land rights and sovereignty continues to eloquently articulate the need for change. A series of images by photographer John Miller document key historical protests in Aotearoa New Zealand, while a major work by Ngataiharuru Taepa, Te Wai Tai, Te Wao Tū (2007) occupies the gallery’s front window space, its sheer surface reflecting the natural environment that sustains us, and is at the heart of many of those protests. The exhibition includes works from Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection and others loaned for the occasion.

Whai Wāhi also features new work by contemporary artists Madison Kelly and Melanie Tangaere Baldwin. Tangaere Baldwin’s Matakite (2023) emphasises clear-sighted ancestor knowledge and a perspective that exists before and beyond the present moment, while her large-scale textile work Hine Whakawetewete (2025) embodies the potential for collective emancipation. Madison Kelly’s sound installation, Heed a tohu, cradle a branch (2025) evokes the whakapapa (lineage) of taniwha (supernatural beings within Māori narrative), in relation to bodies of land and water, and timescales that go beyond the human. Extending beyond Aotearoa, the exhibition includes moving image works Dislocation Blues (2017) by Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation / Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) and We No Longer Prefer Mountains (2023) by Inas Halabi (Palestine), narratives of opposition to the displacement of Indigenous people in their own lands.

The exhibition’s title, Whai Wāhi, cites the “seeking of space” that underscores the efforts of many movements pursuing the return of land and the right to be heard. In this intergenerational exhibition the focus is on expressions of cultural autonomy and dissent, reminding us of work yet to be done if we are to live together with mutual agency.