About

HIWA takes its name from Hiwa-i-te-rangi, the star of Matariki that represents prosperity and the future.

Whenua ki te Whenua is a single-channel video work that reflects on the anxieties of finding a place within the whenua to one day bury my future baby’s placenta (whenua). It contemplates the unsettling reality that, through the lens of a colonial future, we may no longer have whenua—land—to bury our pito, severing our babies' connection to where they stand. Without whenua, what ground is left to anchor us, or to hold our generations to come?