Abstract:
This study explores a narrow but significant body of work within the field of
contemporary Maori art: that is Lisa Reihana's digital marae works. To call them
digital marae works is a distinction made by this thesis: specifically their names
are Native Portraits n. 19897 (1997), Di9ital Marae (2001) and Tauira (1991).
This thesis approaches the digital marae works of Lisa Reihana as a contribution
to current political discourses on decolonisation, specifically in terms of
attempting to locate the ancient values of Maori society in a contemporary
framework. It is a discourse in which she speaks in acknowledgement and
exploration of her cultural origins, from a position at once urban and
contemporary. The digital marae works operate in the spirit of investigation,
exploring the layered and multiple subjectivities negotiated by Maori in the 21st
century. As a Maori artist Reihana is drawing on all the taonga (treasures)
embedded in te ao tawhito (the ancient world). Here, taonga must be interpreted
in the broadest sense as a living pataka (storehouse) of images, words,
narratives, forms, knowledge to be reshaped and deployed by future generations.