“Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua”
I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on the past

Maia Wharewera-Ballard seeks to reclaim mātauranga Māori and explore mana motuhake through whakapapa. Through curiosity she is interested in tracing back generational knowledge systems as a way of understanding identity to oneself, tangata, place and space. Maia’s work engages in themes of intersectional feminism, from a Māori perspective, for Māori.

Te kōpū hei rongo ki te manawa ō taku Tīpuna
Satin matte photographs, Hue, Whariki, Biorhythm audio: 00:10:00

E taku pōtiki, kua puta mai rā koe i te toi i Hawaiki.
My child, you are born from the source, which is at Hawaiki.

Te kōpū hei rongo ki te manawa ō taku Tīpuna (We exist in our grandmother's womb) engages with wāhine as existing multi-dimensionally through tracing matrilineal whakapapa. I visualize the constant correlation between where we come from and how we exist through states of tapu and noa, the sinew that binds us forwards into the past and backward into the future. I am exploring the intersection of creation narratives and whakapapa of the body through recalling Mātauranga. As a māmā this is important to understand where our indigineous sciences transfer through generations and from whom, finding the source that points back to many along the way.

I revert back to Te-one-I-kurawaka, the source, Hawaiki pea, a wairua wāhi tū. From Papatūānuku and Te waiora-o-Tāne came Hineahuone composed from red soil, she is the connection between te ira atua and te ira tangata, created from wahine, by Tane, of wahine. My understanding of internal body relationships is our atua gifted their functions from the natural world as body parts for her, for example: punaweko, hair; tāwhirimātea, lungs; tūmatauenga, muscle; tangaroa, wai and blood; ruaumoko, intestine and fertility from her mother Papatūānuku.

Hineahuone gave birth to Hinetitama, she holds the threshold between earthly light and earthly night, then transcending to Hinenuitepō in rarohenga, creating the space for wahine to menstruate and receive our wairua afterdeath. As wahine we cycle through the many ages of Te Pō, by delving deep into the narratives and characteristics of purakau whakapapa, we can understand our tinana and tikanga through those relationships.

During haputanga, pēpi grow from Te Kore, existing in Te Pō being sustained by her whenua, just as the land sustains us. During childbirth we exist on the threshold of Te Pō and Te Ao, life and death. He tapu te whare tangata for the continuation of your whakapapa line, the ability to create and sustain generations to then beholding the same tapu during your ikura because of losing that potential life. He taonga nō te whenua, me hoki anō ki te whenua (What is given by the land should return to the land). The placenta goes inside an ipu whenua (vessel) which is then buried into the land which will reaffirm Te Ao’s turangawaewae and strengthen her relationship to the taiao.

The audio is bio-sonification translated into musical instruments through adhesive electrodes connected to me and Te Ao. We understand the connections in te taiao share mauri and hope these biorhythms instill their mauri into one of the drying hue to become that vessel and bury in the whenua. Te Ao is engaged in this Mātauranga from conception, so when it is time she will adapt this tikanga through her experiences of woman/motherhood knowing we are them and they are us. Hawaiiki was not just the long-past homeland of Māori, but may also be a metaphorical reference to the mother’s womb, the living waters which overflow. In other words, the spiritual homeland Hawaiiki could very well be representative of the place of creation – Te Kore – enclosed in the living waters of the amniotic sac of the whare tangata (Rangipikitia Sharman, 2019, p. 32).

— Maia Wharewera-Ballard, Artist Statement

Toitū Te Moana is on at Tautai Gallery till June 4 2022