WHAKAWATEA/DECOLONISING THIRD SPACE
Rangituhia Hollis is an emerging Māori artist who has recently presented his moving image series de_kapua at Artspace, Auckland (2008) and Enjoy Gallery, Wellington (2010). Here I look at this work with reference to contemporary Māori and New Zealand art, indigenous politics and popular culture. The artist’s processes are identified and organised according to decolonisation, hegemony and heterotopia, each of which are central concepts in the production of his works. This explanatory approach seeks to reflect and reveal the tightly conceived conceptual processes of the artist. It also recognises that some of the Māori cultural references made in the work are not mainstream knowledge. While the success of this work does not rely on these concepts only, it is an important aspect of Hollis’s work and makes intelligent innovations within contemporary Māori art that ought to be recognised more broadly.
Description and context
Hollis is one of a handful of contemporary Māori artists working with moving image technologies. Unlike his peers, who predominantly use moving image for narrative and experiential effect,1 Hollis employs amateur video, gaming-style animation, film theory and cinematic references to construct statements of identity. These expressions largely avoid visual references to Māori art forms and this ‘absence’ may be read as commentary on the ongoing impact of colonisation.
de_kapua is a multi-screen projected series composed of looped video or animated scenes, which are reconfigured for each exhibition and space. The videos depict hui/family gatherings in a variety of sites including town halls and swimming pools. These vignettes represent unconscious and informal expressions of collective identity and, more specifically, document extended family gatherings held outside the customary site of the marae (tribal meeting space). This appropriation of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Kapua, 2009. Videogame still.
Waipiro Trading Company, 2008. 3D animation, video still
