By Samuel Te Kani

​Three Pump bottles opaline with highly acidic urine
One burdened ash tray smouldering with contempt over an old newspaper heralding terrors already arrived, shelved with familiarity in a library of hellscapes
Too many half eaten bags of Doritos of flavours too numerous and carcinogenic to name
A sideways grin between the curtains, made of sunshine

That's all I can allow myself, that emancipated sliver of daylight because boyslot123 and I have an ongoing competition to see who can deprive themselves of vitamin d the longest.
He's already looking like a Romanian vampire, or the inbred cousin of a Romanian vampire. When I think vampiric seduction boyslot123 doesn't come to mind. I know because we have to share realtime pics of each other in order for the competition to exist at all. He looks like what Macaulay Culkin would look like if Macaulay Culkin was a potato.

boyslot123 and I do talk about things other than vitamin d deprivation though. Not often. But we do. It's generally avoided because he's easily offended. For example, we had a minor disagreement which escalated into a volcanic pissing contest of whose music knowledge was more sophisticated just because my favourite Nine Inch Nails album isn't the same as his favourite Nine Inch Nails album. He ended up DM-ing me a sketch he'd done of me being very graphically sexually assaulted by a dragon. After that we didn't contact each other for three days, not including a day in between where we got put in the same league on fortnite. Normally we'd open private chat and make fun of the other league and discuss funny and inventive ways to slaughter them, but that time we were both still fuming and so we just ignored each other. Our league ended up losing and it was pretty clear our feuding was the culprit because we refused to coordinate effectively and brought everyone down with us. Oops.

I figured if we were severing ties for good then the competition was up and I was just thinking maybe if it's a nice day I might step outside for my first glimpse of daylight in three weeks, but then he messaged me a weak apology that didn't feel genuine but which I graciously accepted for the sake of his alleged mental health issues. I also think he might have a crush on me because the picture he drew of me is unnecessarily pornographic. He'd obviously invested time and energy studying the pics of me I'd sent him and imagining what I look like naked, and then he went and gave me athletic proportions that if I'm honest I just don't have. He also clearly spent quite a bit of time on my eyes. It's eerie how real they look. It would've been all the harder to draw so realistically because I'm ugly crying in the sketches, presumably from having a massive reptile dick inside me.

So I definitely think boyslot123  is crushing on me. He keeps asking personal questions now, things like what's your favourite food where did you grow up etcetera. Ive never been with a guy but having not left the house in so long the interest from him is a little more than flattering. It could just be in my head of course. And there also might be some crosschatter going on between our chats and my porn tabs. At first I'd never allow our benign chats to happen simultaneous with my porn, but it's like he intuits when I'm horned up and about to search something. I'll be halfway through typing interracial gangbang and BAM, there'll be a message from him, like we're tethered at our base impulses.

At first I found it annoying but now his messages are interchangeable in my mind with the pornhub font, they have the same luminous erection-giving aura. And if he hasn't sent me chats in a few hours I'll be hanging out for them thirstily, and I know he doesn't know that's how I'm feeling but I like to think that he does and that it's a game of tease and denial. I've stopped wearing clothes now because between pornhub and fortnite, which is our regularly prearranged meeting space, I'm always turned on. I put a plastic sheet down as a practicality.

I'm really sick. I told boyslot123 and he asked what I'd been eating and I said mostly drone pizza because it's true, and he said that I should get actual groceries drone delivered like he does. He also said that if our competition is seriously effecting my health then we should renege on it. I told him that would make me sad, because I feel like we've come far together and if we aborted without naming a victor then it'll be for nothing. He showed me pictures of himself today and it's like he's made of marble, while I'm just as translucent. But he's right, where he's eating a balanced diet I'm eating shit and the differences are significant. Where he looks pale in a painted way I look defo sick. Apparently he's also been exercising because he doesn't look like a potato anymore, and that combined with his extreme whiteness makes his body look like it's plated with some kind of pure alloy. It's beautiful.

I asked him how he'd been exercising if we aren't allowed to go outside and he said his mum has a basement gym, just a cycle and row machine and some free weights which he's clearly been hitting hard because he's transformed himself in ways I didn't think possible in such a short space of time.  Maybe he's catfishing me.

I'm even more sick now and boyslot123 hasn't messaged me in three days. We hadn't argued or anything, he's just not there. All my messages are untouched, he hasn't been on fortnite. Not a word. I got so lonely that when I went to order pizza tonight I selected the delivery option over the drone. I hadn't shifted from the plastic sheet for an entire day so when I got up to answer the door I had to kind of scrape it off me. I put my robe on with nothing underneath and when the delivery guy handed me my pizza he kind of extended his arm with trepidation, like some red riding hood holding a basket to what was clearly an ogre in his grandmother's decrepit skin.
In that moment I really wanted the delivery guy to touch me. I couldn't say why but it stuck in my head and made me pause while I inwardly scrambled for some legitimate reason to give him so he would stay.

"Do you wanna come inside?" I heard myself saying. He looked at me with shock, not even hatred; he was so taken aback he probably didn't have time to present the usual bravado of his threatened masculinity, being propositioned by a stranger, and another man.
"I'll suck your dick" I heard myself say almost breathlessly.
For a hot second I thought he'd do it, what with the lure of an NSA gobby. But then he just turned and left without saying anything.

I took the residue of that monumental failure back to my laptop. It enclosed me like an iron curtain. I could barely taste the pizza through it as I shovelled it into my mouth, strings of cheese and spurts of pizza grease cascading down the hairy slopes of my bare chest. I think I was crying.
And that's when boyslot123 finally messaged me, delivering me from exile. I could see the DM flagged with the little peach and eggplant emojis like radiant beacons on the sea at night.
I opened the message.

It was another sketch. There was me again, and the dragon, and again I was being penetrated. But not brutalised. If anything this leaner chiselled version of myself wore an expression of bliss and of love. Looking even closer, I could see boyslot123 had subtly changed the dragon's features to more resemble his own.
​
I messaged him back asking what it meant, whether he was trying to tell me something or if he was just quipping me with a novel post as penance for his unexplained hiatus. I imagined tearfully embracing his avatar, feeling the crystalline scales of his pixelated flesh under my similarly synthetic hands, whispering that all was forgiven, covering his reptilian neck with binary kisses.

But he'd gone completely offline.

​

​
​I first heard 'Of Neckbeards and Dragons' earlier this year when Sam and I participated in a reading together on National Poetry Day at Time Out Book Store in Mt Eden. And honestly, I was sitting there with my hand clasped over my mouth in order to stop myself from lolling obnoxiously. It was so funny. Sam's stories combine sci-fi and fantasy with erotic fiction. They are camp and crass as well as totally intelligent and endlessly surprising. In my, I-have-an-MA-in-Creative-Writing-opinion aka personal opinion, Sam is writing some of the dopest short stories in the whole dry country. I was happy as when I reached out and Sam was keen to share some of his work and his thoughts behind his work with us at Toi Māori.
​
A few years ago I came across across a series on RNZ that talked about the concept/genre of ‘afrofuturism’; science fiction that draws on/parallels the African diaspora and how it might be applied to New Zealand/South Pacific writing.  I asked Sam about his thoughts on Māori x Science Fiction and how, if at all, his identity as Māori has influenced his work.

“My practice isn't aware of Māori-dom per se,” Sam says, “ but only in as much as this isn't negotiated in a blatant way. Rather the disconnect between myself and heritage, from globalisation urbanisation call it what you will, is felt wordlessly and goads me to another commons where all the psychic surplus of collective hurting/desiring runs off and renews itself in different forms for successive generations.”

This commons, he says,  is popular culture.

​The nature of a commons (a cultural or natural resource that is accessible to all members of a society),” Sam explains,  “runs counter to capitalist realism and it's regimen of ownership, so perhaps it's only right that displacement would find power in the commons of pop culture, would find a new language to suture the loss-wounds from the old one in the clay of pop's frequently pornographic hyperreality.”

“It could be said much of pop, particularly music, advocates the fetishisation of youth and a disproportionate prioritisation of sex,” Sam suggests, but adding that this makes sense to him.

“As much as sex has been a force historically manipulated to charge consumerism, so too has it been an energy so freewheeling that it's simultaneously birthed the obverse, motivating players to increasingly barbed modes of verticality. By this I mean the players no longer matter, just the flows; the flow of sex, the flow of money, the flow of forms streaming relentlessly from the orifice of a collective dream.”

“Furthermore the capitalist locus is fractal, it's edges are a confusing blur between history and memories of a future that will never happen. As far as I’m concerned the program is combusting in the fires of flows. For those who care to look, it's pretty much gone.”

​“Because of this there are vitalities within popular culture's consistency, even if it's forms are traditionally generated to service a decidedly capitalist framework. It's plasticity, primed to perfectly adapt to any exogenous force or threat, has the inadvertent effect of creating that threat like subversion born in tradition, a systemic glitch a la the real function of Zion in The Matrix Reloaded.”

​

“The compulsive performance of the erotic in my work is both instinctive and deliberate. Instinctive in the sense that sex-feeling as a flow is potent, widely accessible, and perhaps like pop itself is a commons embedded in a multifarious web of colonial management which still reaches up and over, straining above the mores it finds itself constrained by.”

“Sex is future-minded. To be aroused is to feel tension between where you are in spacetime and an as yet virtual-assumption of a future encounter. It moves us through the cosmos with the blunt force of fate. It holds you to life's flow, absolutely. These tensions have historically been harnessed by consumerism whereby consumer objects (including objectified bodies) become the exclusive point of sexualised desire, secularising sex's flow and reducing cosmic-erotics to linear vectors of trade."

“This instrumentalisation of sex is entirely colonial, and I feel obligated to disrupt the regimen.”
​
“If I didn't write," Sam jokes but it's true, "I'd probably start a sex cult.” 

​

You can follow Sam on Instagram and Twitter.

By Tayi Tibble

Franciose Aroha Danoy aka Frenchie is a 26 year old Franco-Māori, (Ngāti Porou) American-Australian artist currently living in Japan. Her primary medium is knitting and her designs are influenced by her Māori and mixed heritage. Francoise is a supporter of Toi Māori Arts and reached out to us about her mahi on Instagram and we are very glad she did! Her knitwear is incredible (there definitely must been some weavers in her ancestral line, lol). She also has a very big following (nearly 30k!). We talked about her designs, feelings of displacement and creating something new and beautiful from a mix of different cultures. ​

​“I consider myself an artist, first and foremost, who uses knitting as the chosen medium to express myself, my stories, my values, and my culture,” Francoise says. “My designs draw influence from my Māori heritage, where I transform the myths, legends, and other stories into stitches and connect them to the story of why we make.”

​Francoise says that her work aims to “remember the past and strengthen the future” while “enriching the present knitting community” by being a representative for the third-space generation.

​​"I find that my designs are very much a reflection of myself," Francoise says, "a piece born out of different cultures to create something new and beautiful."

She says her journey into her Māori​ heritage started the same time that she started knitting five years ago. "When I picked up the needles for the first time," she says, "I was hit with a vision of designing my own patterns that drew inspiration from my cultural heritage."

​"The idea sort of freaked me out," she continues, "growing up in the United States and France, I had been somewhat disconnected from my mother’s culture."

"Of course, I knew some words and remember some stories, but compared to the connection I had to my French side, where I lived in France, speak French fluently, studied French in college, it was really sparse."

She says however, that her art opened the door for her to connect to a part of herself that she had always shut herself off to due to fear of "not being enough.”

"Growing up I was never considered enough. Living in the States, I wasn’t American because I talked with a funny accent. To my Australian cousins, I was not really Australian. And to the French, I was way too American to be French. "​

She says this isn't the first time she has shared her experience of being a third-space person; the knitting community has been very receptive to her story. However this is the first time she has shared her experience and work with audience she has been avoiding for a long time.

She asks, "Would the Māori  community keep me out too?"

You can follow Francoise and her work on Instagram or on her website arohaknits.com

By Tayi Tibble

​​Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho is a takatāpui artist of Ngai Tuhoe, Ngāti Porou, Rongowhakaata, Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Kahungungu descent based in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, they also whakapapa to Samoa, Tahiti, Ireland, Scotland and Denmark. Their work is primarily influenced by their Māori whakapapa, takatāpui identity and political beliefs.

I can't recall if I first came across Huriana on Instagram or Twitter, but what I do know is that I very much enjoy following them on both.

Huriana's Twitter is very much politically conscious and radical. It's a valuable feed to follow if you want to be kept up to date on what's happening in Māori, Polynesian and LGBTQ activism espeically.

Huriana's Instagram feed is a vibrantly curated display of their art. There's a mix of recognizable pop culture figures and heavy political imagery. The colour palette ranges from bright pop-art neons all the way through to tino red, white and blacks.

On their website, Huriana says  that they "are passionate about social justice and making the world a more fair and equitable place for indigenous people, transgender people, and other minority peoples."

Huriana was generous enough to share some of their more political and aching pieces with us, and tbh, there's not a lot to say about these pieces. Honestly they speak for themselves. 

You can follow Huriana on Instagram and Twitter or on their website hurianatko.wordpress.com

By essa may ranapiri

started reading the book backwards
to get through the 25 minutes

from notes to final section
to the middle to first line of first
poem to
acknowledgements to
isbn
every last word so brand new
 
i don’t need to be afraid of what comes next
if i’ve already looked at where the monster ends up

splotching plate with aioli
spearing each chip with the fork
i rinsed clean in the sink
after it lay in the sink
for about a week
 
i’m reminded our people travelled so far
and how far we’ve come coz
i’m scared to leave the couch

You can follow essa on their website, instagram and twitter.

​​​Natasha Matila-Smith grew up in Waterview/Avondale. She started studying art at age 24. She had always drawn, but she says she was working “a shitty retail job” and was “kind of aimless.”

“I decided I wanted to just 'make' and that's what I did. My friend at the time and I  both did the foundation certificate at Whitecliffe and for various reasons, I went on to Elam.” She says she didn't expect to “learn a whole lot there” but through study she wanted to buy herself “some time to figure out my shit.”

“At uni, I was making a lot of minimalist art, as you do, and while I still like that work, it was only after I started really just following my gut without thinking too much about the consequences or basing the work on a bunch of dense research, that people started to respond to the work. I mean, it's not as though they didn't before, but I guess emotional pull and internet culture is something people feel really connected to at the moment. I just make what I make and it's a really feelings-based process.”

​​Natasha says her writing started from a place of decolonising art spaces and making room for Indigenous voices that weren't critiquing museum practices or centred around heritage or diaspora.

“To me,” she explains, “ my culture is innate, it comes with the package. So I don't feel like I have to explain the disconnect with my Māori heritage through my artwork, or neatly package for pakeha how colonisation has hurt me and my whanau. I'd rather talk about it through a 'romantic' lens to illustrate how fucked up those systems are / how fucked up my worldview is because of those systems..... Despite being a strong wahine, I'm not immune to the powers of the patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism.” 

Natasha is currently guest editing the next issue of Runway Australian Experimental Art Issue #38 on Spectacle launching 21 November in Sydney. 

For more information and links to Natasha's work see her website: natashamatilasmith.com
You can also keep up to date with Natasha on Instagram and Twitter 

By Hana Pera Aoake

By Tayi Tibble

Hi Brie, how are you? Well you know I’ve been a big fan of your work for a while now. I remember messaging you about it, telling you how I found it reaffirming when I was writing the draft of my book, Poukahangatus… I loved all the women, the hair, even the way you draw your lines are kind of curvy and feminine. I wondered if you could describe your practice and what it is that you do?
​
Hi darling! I’m doing just fine, thank you for asking. I appreciate the love, I purchased your book and absolutely love every bit of it. Yes so my practice I guess is just drawing and turning my drawings into wearable pieces for others. Such as pins or apparel.

​How did La Kiwi Baby get started? What has been your trajectory as an artist?
​
La Kiwi Baby started back in 2016 as a side hobby to keep me busy during the end of an on and off four year abusive relationship. He was a creative yet troubled man who was a big reason why I started to draw in the first place for both positive and negative reasons. Positive being that he was the one who pushed me to create more, and negative because he did a lot of bad towards me that pushed me to draw as an outlet and as a distraction to my reality. I’m positive about that time now, and I have forgiven him for all his wrong doings. I feel at peace with those days. Because well shit I wouldn’t be as tough, smart, confident, or have this fun side business without those experiences. Sure it would nice to be here without living through traumatic times, but that’s not how life functions. La Kiwi Baby was also his pet name for me that I turned around and made it a name I would enjoy hearing, rather than cringe over. My mentality and the vibe I try to give off with my shop is positivity. Trying to turn any bad situation into a better one. Learning from bad times and growing from them, rather than sulk, live in the past, or live with regret. I live in the bay area, where shit is expensive and time is money. I ain’t got time to be sad or feel bad for myself. No point in it.
 
I have always had a creative side since I was little and would draw from time to time, but never felt confident in my work so I kept it to myself. I ended up going to college for graphic design when I was 20, and it really put a damper on feeling like any type of artist. I was creating stuff for my teachers; stuff graphic designers enjoy creating but personally, that type of art brings me no joy. Using geometric shapes to tell a story is not for me. I love to create things with women and animals and inspired by soul music. So once I graduated and kiwi baby started to become a thing, I found pride in my work. I was making pieces that I enjoyed and it was tight because other people were fond of it too. I also have personal ties to everything I make and I share that online, so I think my relatable stories make people like my pieces rather than my actual skills. I can always "grow as an artist” but what I draw comes from the heart and I think that’s what matters to people.

​You have described La Kiwi Baby as “a one woman show by a lady of mixed cultures. Originally from New Zealand, but grew up in Southern California my work has various inspirations. All are based off of the cultures I was surrounded by and the one I long for back in NZ.” Could you talk about this? What kind of cultures did you grow up around and how do they inform your work? What do you long for back in New Zealand? What are the differences between New Zealand and Southern California, and what is it like splitting your time or even identity between them?

Yes so I grew up in Southern California and we were about an hour and a half north of the border to Mexico. The public schools I attended, for the majority the kids were either white or Mexican. Growing up mixed with absolutely no sight of the New Zealand or Māori culture around me, I gravitated towards the richness of the Mexican culture. Also having a mother of colour I felt like the only other kids who could relate to me were kids with the same experience. Plus their culture is just so beyond interesting and has similarities to Māori. There’s also quite a few words in Spanish that are in Te Reo, but they have completely different meanings.
 
I didn’t fully realize it until I was older, but growing up without your culture can make you feel left out. I don’t belong to any culture I knew out here, and when I go to visit New Zealand I don’t feel like I belong either because I grew up learning American and European history. I learned french and was around spanish, but never knew a lick of te reo, just know a small amount of words. The knowledge I have is from doing personal research online or through books, but even then I question the sources of the information I’m finding. When I tell someone I’m part Māori they look at me like I made up a word. Or I tell someone I’m from New Zealand and they ask me where that is or is that Australia? So I longed for that sense of belonging to something.

I visit my cousins and they all have their memories, know our history, know the language and I feel like an outsider. I try to enjoy the cultures I learn from friends out here, what I grew up around, but they’re not mine to claim. Plus I’m white passing, but mixed. It’s something that I feel sad about, but at the end of the day they aren’t the worst things in life to be dealt with. I had my parents and my brothers who I love unconditionally. I have never been treated differently in a negative way because of my skin colour unlike my brother who took on our Māori skin tone. Racism is alive and well in our world and especially in America. So even though I carry sadness over this, there are things I should and am thankful for.
 
I now live in Northern California which is very different from southern, but I love both very much. I believe California is just a bit bigger than New Zealand. It’s similar in the sense that you have everything terrain wise within one place. From beautiful beaches to snowy mountains or to the dry dessert. But I love New Zealand and California oh so much. I wouldn’t live anywhere else but either places. It’s funny because here people know me from being from New Zealand because I was raised by my Māori mum and my third generation kiwi father who kept us grounded and with the morals and ideals they have from home. But when I’m in New Zealand I’m seen as an American because most my life has been spent out here.

That's really interesting. I mean a lot of Māori even here in NZ aren't raised necessarily in the Māori world, and sometimes books or online education is their first way back into Te Ao Māori and learning about themselves. That was sort of the case for me. I guess the difference doing that sort of journey here, is that you are easily supported; you have more access to resources and other Māori. I can't even imagine the difficulties of trying to do that overseas. It must be, yeah alienating... but it's rewarding mahi. Important mahi. What I feel most proud about, being Māori, is our resilience and ability to be Māori anywhere in a range of ways.

What I really like about your work, and what I think I tend to look for in art generally, is it’s intersectionality. You combine Māori culture, latinx culture, pop culture… imagery of protestors, berets and bats, with feminine lush florals, tropics etc. How do you use and navigate all these different influences. Is it deliberate and conscious? Or is it just totally inherent and natural for you?
​
The way you describe my art is so beyond what I would ever say about it! I honestly just create what comes to me in the moment. From what I’m feeling or what I want to feel. A lot of my drawings have to do with what I wish I was or what I’m working towards being. It’s all about empowerment and creating a reality I don’t personally have. I also love strong women of colour more than anything. I admire them. Women have to internalize so much in life and then to be of colour is another level. This is all information I have learned from family, friends, and loved ones. And so I like to pay homage to that to show them they’re seen for their strength and their beauty. Because society and pop culture doesn’t do that very often. The world, politics, racism, and humans can be so ugly. I want to create something pretty or beautiful or sexy so we can take a break from all that.
 
Oh well, I’m really dorky and poetic lol, but I mean it! I’m so gushy over your lush work! Have been since I first came across you and your work on Instagram; how important has social media been for you and your work?
​
Social media is the reason why La Kiwi Baby even exists. It took me time to be okay with it, but I have realized that my emotional connection to what I do, and sharing myself as a person draws people to what I make. Because trust, anyone could draw what I draw..it’s not technically special or unique. But I think because I share myself and why I make what I make, people relate to it. So if I opened up my online store without my instagram, a lot of what I do probably wouldn’t be noticed. I actually deleted my instagram months before I opened up Kiwi Baby because I hate how it makes us compare our lives to others when everyone is only showing the highlights. So it makes people feel lesser and I’m not down with that aspect of social media.

You sell your work predominantly online; but I have also seen you selling them in pop ups irl. What are the benefits of either? Who tends to be you customer? Basically I am curious as to how people in the US/non-maori respond to your pieces that feature Maori iconography?
​
Yeah online is where most of my sales come from. I sell wholesale to a few ma and pop type shops in California and every once in a while do pop ups. Pop ups are fun because I get to actually meet people I’m selling to, and I’m a huge people person and hella chatty so I enjoy the interaction with the people who want to take home my art. My customers are mostly women 18-30 and I have a good amount throughout US but I would say mostly California. Very few people out here will know about Māori designs, but once in a blue moon someone will call it out which is cool. I will have people tell me they love a design that has Māori iconography, but won’t purchase it due to the lack of knowledge for the culture. I don’t love that feedback, but I appreciate the honesty and them not wanting to appropriate something they know nothing about.

​Ahhh that’s super interesting to me too… it’s such a tension isn’t it? On one hand it's super important that we protect our taonga and intellectual property, especially since so much has already been taken from us, but on the other hand, I still want non-maori to engage with my work. Sometimes I feel like not engaging because of ‘fear of appropriation” is a cop-out. Māori have invited others into our culture, literally since contact. Sometimes I want to be like, 'mam it's okay for you to enjoy this!" Just like, don't steal from us lol. Also give us your money it's called reparations haha. On a, I guess brighter note, who are some of your favourite artists of any genre, that inspire you and make you excited about the current creative outputs in 2017?
​
My favorite artists are actually soul singers such as Barbara Mason, Brenton Wood, The Lovelites, Sunny and the Sunliners, and so much more. Their music means the world to me. I’m a big emotional baby, and the lyrics and rhythm of soul music always makes my feelings seem valid and inspires me.
 

​Any interesting upcoming projects? Do you have any major creative ambitions lol?
 
At the moment for upcoming projects, I’m starting to have patches made through my friend Megan who runs Patch Ya Later. You can find her beautiful work on instagram @patchyalater. I’m also in the works of learning to make jewelry through my talented friend and you can find her on instagram @maidenvoyagejewelry. It’s so exciting and it’s going to be a while before anything gets put out, but keep your eyes pealed!
 
If you wanted to give some wise or unwise words to other Māori artists, what would you say?

Wise or unwise words? Hmm. Not everything you create will be loved and adored by the masses. And that’s okay. You’re not a machine, you have to go through the humps of either not creating or creating shit to get to somewhere good. Ain’t nothing easy or perfect, so don’t stress it.
 
Thank you for asking me this questions! I appreciate your work and your ongoing support for little ole me. 
​
Kiwi BB aka Brie

​You can follow Brie on Instagram and Facebook.

You can purchase her apparel and work at lakiwibaby.com 

By Tayi Tibble

Isobel Joy Te Aho-White, known as 'Izzy Joy' is an illustrator and artist based in Te Whanganui a Tara. I came across Izzy's work when I saw she was involved in a recent exhibition 'Ritual Space' at the Potocki Paterson Art Gallery, earlier this month. Izzy's work is distinctly gothic, mythical and witchy... I wasn't surprised when she said she came from a line of wāhine toa, healers and matakite! Izzy chatted to us about her mahi and how she used her art to journey further into the  Māori world and vice versa; how Te Ao Māori helped her find her 'voice' in her art.

​"Art is something that's a huge part of me, it's how I understand and interpret the world around me, and how I express myself," Izzy says.
 
"I grew up mostly detached from Te Ao Māori. I knew I had whakapapa, that I was "part māori", but never really explored it until I reached my twenties. There's a history of mental illness and deep sense of whakamā in my ancestral line, which I later came to know as the effects of inter-generational trauma and abuse stemming from colonization and dispossession. But I come from a sacred bloodline of wāhine toa, healers and matakite. I think this is where I get my deep sense of connection with the whenua and my intuition from." 
​

Izzy completed an honours degree in graphic design at Massey University in 2014, but left feeling "completely lost and burnt out." She says she has always battled with anxiety, but at that time "the constant panic attacks were overwhelming."

"I also started struggling with carpal tunnel syndrome in my dominant hand. My Aunty (Keri Lawson-Te Aho) saw the need in me for healing and cultural reconnection, and took me to see Mark Kopua, who gave me a tā moko on my hand and wrist in the form of Hine Nui Te Pō, for guidance and healing. That was really the time when I started to connect with te ao māori, and when I started to find the voice in my art."

​"Most of my work these days incorporates a combination of the themes that are important to me. the things that make me wahine, a lover of nature, and a bit of a goth. at the core, my art is about healing and empowerment, cultural reconnection, and passing on my ancestral legacy. Through the ritual practice of linework, I help to heal my ancestors, and thereby myself. My wāhine tupuna walk with me through my artwork."
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​Between her own projects, Izzy works as a freelance illustrator. She has completed commissions for Otago University Māori Health department, NZ Post, Action Station, and Fightback Magazine, among various exhibitions and murals around Wellington. 

Earlier this year she illustrated the Ready to Read book How Kiwi Saved the Forest which Izzy describes as her "biggest illustration job."

Izzy is also the author of two e-books, Io Wahine: The Story of Hineahuone and Arohatahi: The story of Rangi and Papa.
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​You can follow Izzy on Facebook and on Instagram.

You can purchase some of her canvas' here. 

By Tayi Tibble

“My roots bring me back to Kawerau,” Nicole says. “It’s a small town that sits in between two of my iwi, Tūhoe and Te Arawa. As important as it is to me now, at the time I hadn’t processed the value of my Maoritanga, so even though I was surrounded by it, I chose to only carry with me the bare minimum when I moved to the city at 17.”

Nicole went to art school for a year before dropping out. She says, “I was still learning how to fend for myself and navigate white spaces. I ended up becoming an english, media and creative writing graduate instead.”
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In her last year of uni, Nicole “picked up the shitty camera” she bought when she was at art school and started taking photos of her friends and Auckland city. “It was hard adjusting to the city when you used to have a river running through your backyard. To cope, I started imagining the streets downtown as a giant playground. I would roam them late at night by myself, people watching or trying to sneak into abandoned buildings. One night I took photos at a friends party on K Road and from there I started getting paid to do others.”

“As Māori, it’s hard to remember who we are and where we're from when we begin living in urban areas. And we know that this was the whole point of bringing Māori into the cities...” Nicole says, invoking the whole history of mass Maori urbanisation and the disenfranchisement and alienation that followed as a result. Nicole continues, “If I stand in the middle of Te Urewera, how can I forget my whakapapa? If I’m in the city, how can I remember when Papatūānuku has been covered and my friends are pushing me to come to the gig? Before I started to acknowledge my tūpuna, I feel I was basically ceding my indigeneity with the way I was choosing to live here. I’m still learning how to navigate myself with mana here.” 
 
“For the past three years I’ve been working and playing in and out of Auckland’s creative/music scene.” Nicole says she found whanau, in a collective called The Grow Room. They had a studio space inside St Kevin’s Arcade on K Road, then another space in Samoa House… however rent was rising, they were “struggling” and could no longer afford a venue. “So we had to dip,” Nicole says. “During this time, I basically documented the gentrification of K Road’s underground creative communities. It was nice being able to showcase all these crazy things happening - no one else was doing them any justice.”

“At the moment I freelance. I could be doing anything from creating visuals for a theatre show to shooting a concert for an international artist. I’m always working on my own projects on the side,” she says, although she adds that she has been “a bit quiet” with her own work lately because “her mindset has shifted a lot.”

​“It’s a bit of a painful process so I have to let things sit for a while and ideas to mature before doing anything in the public eye. I’ve been focused on going home more often, delving deeper into my whakapapa and re/learning history. Now, most of my closest friends here are Māori and I’m lucky to be able to unravel everything with them, and document the process. We’ve been going to each others marae for wananga and have been talking about sparking up a little book club for Māori resources among other ideas.”

In regards to her ambitions and artistic intentions she says she hopes her work “will be felt by other Māori on their own journey of remembering, reacquainting and reclaiming.”
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“I’m more into working with video at the moment because of the limitations photography can have when trying to encapsulate something. Eventually I’d like to create work/work in ways that tangibly help my whanau and iwi, but I’ll need to be ready to move back home for that.”

At the very last minute I ask Nicole if there is one photo in particular that she considers her favourite, the best photograph she has taken. Like every artistm she says it "changes" but ultimately chooses an image of her Dad taken earlier in the year at their marae, Tauarau, in Ruatoki. "It looks so beautiful and regal," Nicole says. 

​"Every time I go home my dad takes me on these trips to Ruatoki and Taneatua or Rotorua to visit whanau, our urupa and the land we have. He tells me all of his stories, and shows me exactly where they happened. He’s been doing this since I was a kid but I really only started paying attention over the last few years. Now that he knows I want to know everything, he’s been telling me more than ever before."