TE AO MĀORI | ISSUE TWELVE | NOSTALGIA Written by Skye Lunson-Storey (they/them) | Whakatōhea, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tūwharetoa | @uku_rangi | Arts, Culture, and Te Ao Māori Editor I’ve watched you from afar for so long. The changes and shifts, like tides controlled by te marama. I look at her and ask “why does the place I once knew seem foreign to me?” My heart feels heavy as I question the strong resistance within. This was never my whenua, yet you raised me. You protected my taina when...

TE AO MĀORI | ISSUE ELEVEN | MAHIMAHI / SEX Written by Skye Lunson-Storey (they/them) | Whakatōhea, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tūwharetoa | @uku_rangi | Arts, Culture, and Te Ao Māori Editor Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique, 1804, Jean-Gabriel Charvet The present-day understandings of gender and sexuality of Indigenous people across te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa have been disrupted through the colonial gaze that enforced their Christian and heteropatriarchal values. Historically, such values built a...

KŌRERO TOI | ISSUE TEN | ISOLATION Written by Skye Lunson-Storey (they/them) | Whakatōhea, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tūwharetoa | @uku_rangi | Arts, Culture, and Te Ao Māori Editor Art has the ability to become a bridge between people and the environments they inhabit. Through processes of colonisation, urbanisation, and extraction, we have increasingly become disconnected from our environment. Isolated from the whenua that sustains us. This disconnection is not only physical, but cultural and...

INTERVIEW | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Micheal McCabe in conversation with Skye Lunson-Storey (they/them) | @uku_rangi | Arts, Culture, & Te Ao Māori Editor Rendered Futures: Drawing Architecture was an exhibition curated by Micheal McCabe and Kim Paton. Held in 2025 at Objectspace in both Tāmaki & Ōtautahi, it charts five decades of architectural drawing in response to today's stylised digital render. Skye: Rendered Futures as an exhibition, quote, "brings together drawings from more than fifty...

Different, Unusual, Abnormal, Changed. INTERVIEW / TE AO MĀORI | ISSUE SEVEN | MATARIKI A kōrero with Emily Lyall (she/her) @teaoemily on her programme Rerekē as the 2026 Artspace Aotearoa curatorial intern. Interviewed by Skye Lunson-Storey (they/them) | Arts, Culture, Te Ao Māori Editor The concept of Rerekē encourages artists to be "bold, weird, and different." Expanding on three toi Māori categories, what does being rerekē mean to you personally, and how has that idea shaped the...

Toi Māori moving beyond gender TE AO MĀORI | ISSUE SIX | MAHI Ā-RINGA / CRAFT Written by Skye Lunson-Storey (they/them) | Whakatōhea, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tūwharetoa | @uku_rangi | Arts, Culture, and Te Ao Māori Editor The patience, collective nature, and tactile act of creating with my hands connect me to something larger than myself. In te ao Māori, mahi ā-ringa/mahi toi are not simply artistic practices; they are vessels of whakapapa, preserving pūrākau and carrying the mātauranga of...