Kōrero Toi: Isolated From the Whenua

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 spiritual. It shapes the ways we understand land, water, forests, and the other life forms that exist alongside us. This piece considers how colonisation has contributed to our isolation from the whenua, and how contemporary art can help reconnect us with Papatūānuku and te taiao. Through the practices of artists Yona Lee, Ana Iti, and Louise Pōtiki Bryant, I reflect on how art can encourage us to become more present within our surroundings and reconsider our relationship with the natural world. 

Yona Lee’s large-scale sculptural installations demonstrate this power of noticing. Through site-specific works constructed from welded stainless-steel pipes, Lee maps and responds to the spaces around her, bringing together urban, domestic, and infrastructural materials. Every time I sit on a bus noticing the rigid tubular metal structures within, I cannot help but be reminded of her work. I remember first encountering Lee’s work at Auckland Art Gallery before deciding to pursue visual arts. At first, I was perplexed by it, but the work stayed with me. Although Lee’s practice does not specifically address the whenua, her installations have the ability to make the viewer conscious of their surroundings within an urban and domestic environment. Her work asks us to look again at the structures we move through every day. As a South Korean-born New Zealand artist, her work also engages with ideas of migration and diaspora, further expanding our understanding of place. 

Ana Iti’s practice moves more directly into the relationship between colonial histories, infrastructure, and the natural environment, developing a visual language from industrial and infrastructural materials. Recently, I encountered Ngahere behind a pile of Metal at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. The work references the infrastructure and industry surrounding kauri logging in Te Tai Tokerau, beginning with a kōrero between Iti and her uncle about how to locate kauri on hapū land. The work establishes a strong connection between rākau and wai, while highlighting the impact of extractive practices on the whenua. A sawtooth drawing made from burnt kauri charcoal traces the gallery walls, while a chain-metal pipe structure replicates the marine cranes used to transport logs through waterways. The machinery becomes a drawing in itself. Through repeated encounters with the work, my understanding of it shifted. In my most recent encounter, I could not shake the resemblance between the industrial crane and the immense scale of a tohorā (whale). The machine, which once represented extraction, began to evoke another living presence within the environment.

Louise Pōtiki Bryant offers another way of reconnecting us to the whenua through movement. As a choreographer, dancer, and video artist, Pōtiki Bryant has a rich foundation from which to explore relationships between people, land, water, and whakapapa. In Te Hā o Papatūānuku, she considers how whenua is changed by the movement of water, reflecting on the devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 and the inseparable relationship between water and land. There is one moment in the work that particularly stayed with me. A figure curls into a fetal position while silt, soil, and speckles stream across their body, almost resembling a galaxy. For me, this subtle moment reflects on how we are the whenua. We come from the earth and the stars, and eventually we return to Papatūānuku. The body becomes both human and landscape, dissolving the boundary between ourselves and te taiao. Similarly, Ka Tiri o te Moana, a collaboration between Atamira Dance Company artists and Pōtiki Bryant, directly addresses climate change and sea-level rise caused by Antarctic ice melt. The work brings a global environmental crisis into relation with coastal communities here in Aotearoa, reminding us that these changes are not distant or abstract. They are already affecting ways of living. 

These artists demonstrate that art can provide a space for reconnection; they ask us to become attentive to the environments we occupy and the histories embedded within them. The human-centred way of thinking that prioritises development and economic growth has contributed to the loss of lives, homes, livelihoods, and significant amounts of money following environmental and natural devastation. We already have much of the knowledge required to design and build with these risks in mind. What is often missing is the political will, foresight, and aroha to put that knowledge into action. Being isolated from our environment does not protect us from it. Instead, it can leave us less prepared to understand and respond to its changing conditions. This is where I see art playing an important role. Art can create an encounter with our surroundings that shifts our perspective on what is often overlooked. The whenua will continue beyond us, but the question is what kind of relationship we choose to have with it while we are here.