Neki Arā, Arā Neki: Art, Belonging and Not Belonging, Māori and Pākehā in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

In Aotearoa, many of us often situate ourselves on one side of a binary of colonial dynamics, despite how we have whakapapa (genealogies) that interweave these locations of belonging. This article will reflect on what it can mean to be Māori and Pākehā (NZ European of mainly British descent) and attempt to come to terms with historical and ongoing tensions between many of our collective ancestors that are still ongoing in Aotearoa (New Zealand). This includes the author’s mixed cultural whakapapa (ancestry). Influences in this article include mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and Western philosophy and art-related perspectives. Pūrākau (stories of origin) of Māui the Trickster in relation to notions of productive idiocy and testing informed by Avital Ronell’s reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Gay Science with an influence by Michel Foucault will be explored in relation to art and live art practices of artists who slide through the woven relationships of being Māori and Pākehā. Projects of Rebecca Ann Hobbs and Martin Awa Clarke Langdon, James Tapsell-Kururangi and Mark Harvey are reflected on, considering this theme. Each of these works will be contextualised in response to political tensions pertaining to normative cultural ideals and notions of acceptability in the worlds of Māori and Pākehā.