Bio

Ngahina Hohaia (Taranaki iwi, Parihaka – Ngāti Moeahu, Ngāti Haupoto) is a Taranaki-based multi-media artist who received a New Generation Award from The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi in 2010. Her installations including contemporary deployments of traditional poi manu have been exhibited in significant public-gallery exhibitions, including Te Hou Whakatonu (Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth, 2023) and Toi Tū Toi Ora (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2020.

Much of the narrative base of her poi manu-based installations refer to her family and iwi history at Parihaka on the west coast of Taranaki, the site of the passive resistance movement led by Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Poi manu are beguiling as carriers of discourse, given that their primary use is in elaborate waiata and dance presentations within Māori culture. Here they are located into an art space and sit as elegant metaphors for song and carriers of meaning, fashioned with European materials to reclaim agency within a wider cross-cultural conversation between history and contemporary art practice.

The poi manu are decorated with a variety of symbols that relate to the history of Parihaka, including the raukura – the three albatross feathers symbolising honour, peace and goodwill. In a recent interview with Art News Aotearoa, Hohaia explains the importance of the raukura. ‘Our Parihaka tūpuna made reference to the raukura as a source of healing – he rau rengarenga (healing herb). But I think that because of the way non-Māori have tended to write about Parihaka, the narrative of peace has been hyper-romanticised in a way that undermines what the pursuit of peace actively requires, to achieve peace that’s just and restorative. So I’m mindful … that meaning can be redefined when language transposes across one cultural paradigm to another.’

Exhibitions

• 2024   Tim Melville, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Mind that Māori
  
• 2023   Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Ngāmotu New Plymouth: Te Hou Whakatonu: A Series of Never-Ending Beginnings
  
• 2023   Corban Arts Centre, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Landmarks for the landless
  
• 2021   Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan: The Pan-Austro-Nesian Arts Festival
  
• 2020   Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki: Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art
  
• 2016   Pātaka Art + Museum, Porirua: Tools of Oppression and Liberation