Kia Ora Whaea

"Kia ora" is not just a greeting, an acknowledgment of someone's presence, a hello, or a thank you. More deeply, it acknowledges one's well-being and, through that, their mana and the tapu that surrounds them. "Kia ora" – "be well" – is a way to say, "I celebrate you."

Kia Ora Whaea is an expression of affection for the women who carry our pasts and futures, an affirmation of the vital role mothers play in the hauora (complete wellness) of us all, and a recognition of the myriad inherent challenges of motherhood. This exhibition will explore maternal mental health from a Māori perspective, the effects of colonialism on indigenous ideas of maternity, the ways in which we assume the maternal mantle, and the position of whāea in domestic, intimate, and private spaces.

This exhibition is an extension of the kōrero begun at Blue Oyster Project Space in 2022 and continued at The Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki (CoCA) earlier this year.

Gallery Programmes

Paint Your Taoka with Kate Stevens West, 28 September 10am-12pm

Māmā // Maru - Exhibition accompanying essay by Kirsty Dunn

I wasn’t so sure I’d ever become a mum, to be honest; didn’t have that dream as a girl.  Yeah I had doll-babies; a cane bassinet that rocked; one of those bubs that closed its big blue eyes when you’d lie it down with an open mouth like an “o” shape you could fit the teat of a tiny bottle in (and sometimes the tip of a four-year-old’s pinky finger).  My mum is really good at mumming.  She’s actually the best at it.  Maybe there’s a part of me that didn’t think I could ever live up to her super-mum-levels or replicate her nesting, nurturing prowess; a part of me that thought that I was perhaps a bit too selfish and scatter-brained and not wholly capable of looking after myself very well, let alone a smaller sort-of double in addition. When I rang to tell my parents I was hapū, I remember very clearly the shock in their voices.  Like, “oh wow, you’re doing that?” haha.  I also remember Mum saying that she loved being pregnant; that it felt amazing and that she reckoned she was possibly in the best “shape” (lol) ever of her life at the time.  Shoney got the glow-up for reals.  When I was three months into my own pregnancy, I reminded Mum of her sweet-and-sunny stories. “Muuuumm” I said, exasperated, drawing out the “aaaaah” between the ms, in my sad, sorry, out-of-myself, possibly even jealous kind of way.  “Were you high? This fucking sucks.” (She was not.) Even though this was just another thing in a long line of things I felt I was not-very-good at, I still felt I’d been a little bit set-up.   I started to really hate the word “natural”. I started to think about aliens a lot.  I started to dream about my great-grandmother who grew thirteen babies in her puku and who gave birth to them in a pit she dug herself at the whānau farm in the far north.  I find it hard to talk about whenua and sustenance and the growing of things when I haven’t stepped foot on that land since I was nine years old and I live so, so far away from her. Nine. The age my son is now. 

when you were one week young and every thing hurt i dressed you carefully in a cream woollen onesie wrapped you up in soft white muslin and poured you into a back-pack kete that my aunty had given me when i was way too young to ever consider using it for anything other than summertime togs and towels | you were one week young and i placed a charcoal-coloured second-hand blanket on the hard dark floor of our six by six metre converted garage whare and put you (inside the kete) and the kete down onto the centre of the blanket and then i shuffled around the room – it was all just one room – in threadbare bobbly blue bed-socks looking for the all of the things constructing a dimly lit diorama in my head as i went | one week young and the curtains are drawn and there’s some sunlight trying to edge in under- neath them lighting up long strands of dark hair i keep losing turning toast crumbs into glitter illuminating spiderweb ghost-streamers dangling down the corners of our small world | one week young and there you are with your arms outstretched and tiny fists clenching and red face grimacing and eyes not seeing and waha wanting me and i have found my camera and am thinking about how the pictures would look better under a black and white filter with a gaussian blur and vignette effect and telling my- self reminding myself to edit those later and maybe make a birth announcement later because i still haven’t done that yet because i'm not sure if you give the weight in pounds or kilograms now and if me placing my pounamu pendant over and across you is too much or too little or too heavy maybe and i think about how you might use that one day to cut your teeth like i did on my dad’s matau with his light green cord like no other and hook made of cow bone casting shadows on the noticeboard where it hung for so long next to newspaper clippings of saturday sport and that story about my koro i had published the year i fell in love with someone who pretended to love me in return and who id talk with aunties about years and years later looking back on my misplaced aroha like all those draft poems lurking in shoe-box archives | only one week young and i am thirty fucking one and i am counting the grey hairs in the mirror hoping when i get to the end of the counting you’ll have finished crying and i will take you out of the kete and hold you close to my chest while i try to hang it back upon the cold white concrete wall behind the couch and i will hold you and hold you keep holding you while i look for the lens cap for the camera and try to find the bag for the camera and hold you and check the door is locked while i hold you and find my drink bottle while i hold you and wonder where the cord is for the camera and hold you and find the laptop and hold you and put the cord in while i hold you and note the rotting cacti sitting over-watered on the windowsill while i hold you and hold you while i try to upload this happy memory for everyone to see.

Yeah he is nine now (how did that happen?) and I take my smaller sort-of double to art galleries sometimes. I would like to tell you that he goes willingly, wide-eyed and hungry for it but the truth is sometimes I bribe him with Angry BirdsTM and ice-cream promises. “Oh Muuuuuum” he says, exasperated, drawing out the “aaaaah” between the ms, in his sassy, sing-song, pleading, maybe even mocking kind of way. One time, we went to a show about things missing and he said something like “This one is my favourite. It’s like it’s glitching out. Like the person who made it is playing games with us but we kind of know what it is because of the colours. It makes me feel weird. Like someone’s watching me” and then he said “Ok can we go now?” and I stood there for a second a little bit dumbfounded, a little bit impressed, and a little bit hōhā all at once like “Who even are you?” I wanted to say “Tell me what you think of all of them though, every single one, I want to know I need to know” but instead I said “Yeah, okay” and I started counting my change to see if we had enough for two scoops of salted caramel ice-cream on the way back to the car.

Kirsty Dunn (Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) is a māmā, reo-learner, playlist enthusiast, wannabe poet, and writer based in Ōhinehou, Aotearoa.  She is also a lecturer in Aotahi: The School of Māori and Indigenous Studies at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | The University of Canterbury where she fan-girls Māori storytellers on a daily basis.