About

When working with whenua (earth), Te Ara Minhinnick reveals a nexus of relations between the land, the sea, and past and future tangata (people), in an artistic practice which she refers to as ‘re-representing’.

Currently residing in her haukāinga (ancestral home) of Waiuku, Minhinnick has collected the materials that comprise this installation from the three waterways that surround her, namely Te Awa o Waikato, Te Maanukanuka o Hoturoa, and Te Tai o Rehua. Through exhuming kerewhenua (soil), uku (clay), and onepuu (sand), she invokes a whakapapa (genealogy) that begins in the land and extends out to herself and her whanau of the present day, a resolute statement of tino rangatiratanga, Maori self-determination.

For her, whenua is ‘a site of evidence, a source to remember, and a place of obligation to all.’