Blog Rua: Nothing excites me, and I want to read something that does.
Extracts from my visual arts thesis, when all we did was write, eat, sleep, repeat.
My art practice is a conflict wanting resolution—specifically, I am negotiating my relationship with the self and ‘other,’ where ‘other’ serves as a mirror. I choose ‘wāhine’ rather than ‘women’ because art is the medium that channels my wairua, wahine Māori identity.
This urge forms the central tension of my art practice: nothing but art allows this part of me to speak.
Kai kōrero is my method for exploring identity: it allows my ego to sit with another, making the wahine metaphorical—a vessel rather than an object. I could tell wāhine stories as portraits, but I want to avoid objectifying them as has happened before. The vessel keeps the wahine tapu (safe), while kōrero is embodied as breath— ‘Ha’—so each vessel, like a cup filled with boiling water or whakapapa, carries a living story. I believe this approach preserves sacredness while inviting engagement.
We all originate from somewhere, which makes me consider the point of transformation and sense of belonging.
I am negotiating between who I am and who I am not—yearning to connect with parts of myself dormant until adulthood, no longer confined but embodied by creativity. I do not aim to stand at the front of the marae as kaikaranga, which overwhelms me, but to embody the role privately, in my own way. My spiritual voice feels Māori but emerges in English. This tension between cultural identity and expression underlies my writing challenge: how do I balance academic demands with these internal contradictions and emotions?
My central argument is that authentic writing entails accepting this internal conflict as an integral part of my story.
I tell myself: write as if talking to your nana or best friend, people you trust who have wisdom. Write for a smart reader with relevant knowledge, who wants to join the kōrero not from duty but from care. Write to someone who’s earned the right to read it. Write for your four-year-old who looks only at you, or a lover who licks their lips because you opened yours.
Write because if you don’t, you’ll be restless forever.
This extract relates to Chantel Matthews, Master of Visual Arts, AUT University, 2021, I sea a vessel filled with tea: A sculptural practice exploring day-to-day wāhine ways through whakapapa layers. The exegesis aimed to investigate how sculptural practice can illuminate the complex lived realities of wāhine by exploring concepts of wāhine and whakapapa. The thesis is upheld by a scaffold of Māori and Indigenous academics, philosophers, thinkers, and artists who assist in revealing many layers of whakapapa through a strong wāhine lens.
https://hdl.handle.net/10292/14462
Chantel Matthews (Founder/Editor)
https://www.chantelmatthewsart.com
https://www.instagram.com/chantelmatthews/?hl=en
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