Huhana Smith
Senior Curator Maori, Museum of
New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Ngati Tukorehe
Artist, Painter, Sculptor, Environmentalist

As mentioned in a recent Te Papa publication, when Maori cultural practice and acknowledgement of customary templates temper the vision for expression in conjunction with art aesthetic frameworks, the results are dynamic and multi-layered. The people closest to me are artists and like them, I too satisfy a need to convey a bigger or other 'picture'. My artist friends contemplate and negotiate intricacies, seek layers, play with them, parody them, expose them or leave them as quiet secrets within their work. They assess the tensions and contradictions of the day-to-day and see futures through them.