Toi Taiao Whakatairanga: Shifting awareness of forest health through artistic research

Toi Taiao Whakatairanga (TTW) is a three-year transdisciplinary artistic research project based in Aotearoa, New Zealand. TTW explores the ways arts practices can contribute to public awareness of two plant pathogens threatening native tree species – kauri dieback and myrtle rust. The project commissioned and curated Māori artists to create artworks through engaging with iwi (tribes), hapū (sub-tribes), communities, mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and Western science. In this chapter, we discuss two art projects from Te Tai Rāwhiti, on the East Coast of New Zealand’s North Island.

TTW is not explicitly a development project, but, we argue, both artworks reveal the ways colonial economic and environmental development initiatives have contributed to species extinction and ecosystem degradation, threatening the continuity of Māori socio-environmental knowledge, health and spiritual and economic well-being. Both works also raise questions about sovereignty and self-determination, and we draw on Māori scholarship to interrogate the extent to which, through the East Coast projects, TTW developed a methodology for curating and researching creative practice that supports the mana motuhake (self-determination and a sense of mana through authority) of Māori iwi and hapū.