Aimee-Rose Stephenson - Installation Artist at MAORI MARKet
Massey Maori studies Masters student Aimee-Rose Stephenson took a look at cultural protocol, didn’t like what she saw and came up with a potent way of getting her message across...
MAORI MARKet Media Resource (April 2007)
Aimee-Rose Stephenson - 'A Nice White Space' 2000
Massey Maori studies Masters student Aimee-Rose Stephenson took a look at cultural protocol, didn’t like what she saw and came up with a potent way of getting her message across.
Stephenson’s installation ‘A Nice White Space’ at MAORI MARKet in Wellington last weekend, was a scaled down version of the one she did at Te Manawa museum in Palmerston North. It was compellingly effective for all that. Within the enclosed ‘nice white space’ sat a wheelchair and an infant’s cot – both of them lined with human hair.
Why human hair?
“I don’t enjoy being in hospital, it’s not a comfortable feeling. I wanted to create that feeling (of discomfort) through the installation,” said Stephenson.
Juxtaposing items of comfort (a chair and a bed) with something as ‘uncomfortable’ as cuttings of human hair evoked exactly the response Stephenson intended.
“I was so surprised how easily the hairdressers I asked for gave me the hair! I mean, here was something that was a part of someone and it was just given to me 'here, take it.’ The installation is very physical, it effects you physically, it’s about how it makes you feel.”
Her idea for the installation came when she studied the blueprints for the Palmerston North hospital and found the cafeteria was built just two floors above the mortuary.
“For Maori people, or anyone with any sensitivity, to put an eating place over a morgue is just offensive. I didn’t feel the hospital had paid any consideration to cultural sensitivities.”
From there, Stephenson set about creating an ‘in your face’ model representing the clash of values, the violation of cultural sensitivity, she saw in the hospital. Cultural protocols, she agrees, are changing but the spatial layout of health facilities, consciously or unconsciously, do cause discomfort.
“The implications of cultural protocols are often ignored by architects, resulting in spaces that are composed as individual units placing more importance on physical practicality than cultural wellbeing.”
Tikanga – (protocol) – is it an afterthought? Stephenson asks.
Tikanga – written and embossed on walls, but is it practised?
ENDS