Welcome to Festival Zone for February 2023.

We hope everyone stays safe and dry this Waitangi Weekend in Aotearoa. We hope you will enjoy to learn more about our Māori (Tino Rangatiratanga) flag and its origins, on the NZ Govt's Ministry of Culture and Heritage website. It represents a central part of the ongoing movement for self determination and redress of historic injustices, social inequity and is often seen as a statement of our indigenous people's political fight for recognition as equal Treaty of Waitangi partners. Flying the two flags, the preferred national Māori flag and the NZ flag together on Waitangi Day is encouraged at official events.

The 2023 Festival theme is resistance [ātete]. We're delighted to share our advance announcement of key artist's who will feature in the 'Resistance' suite of works.

Rafael Vilela (Brazil) – Forest Ruins: Indigenous Way of Life and Environmental Crisis in the Americas’ Largest City.

The tiny territory that is home to the indigenous Guarani Mbyá people lies at the very north of the Brazilian metropolis of São Paulo. Vilela has been engaged with the indigenous movement in Brazil for around ten years. This explains the closeness and intimacy seen in many of the pictures in his Forest Ruins series: it is not limited to striking motifs capturing Mbyá’s struggle, but also shows everyday life and rituals on the reservation.

Born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1989, the independent photographer concentrates on documenting economic and climate crises in his homeland. In 2013, he was one of the founders of Mídia NINJA, a journalist and activist collective dedicated to reporting on the indigenous people’s struggle for their land and for social justice. Vilela’s work has been published in the The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Intercept, Vice and National Geographic, among others. This series was shortlisted for the 2022 Leica Oskar Barnack Award.

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Kate van Der Drift (NZ) - Her 'Water Slows As It Rounds The Bend' series is re-visited after its first showing by Sanderson Gallery in the Festival in 2018. In this iteration we share this work using our 'Resistance' [ātete] theme as the foundation for ven Der Drift's ongoing investigation into the fragile ecology and transformation of the Hauraki Plains. The groundwater of the present day Plains is tightly controlled; few clues remain of the great fertile wetland, yet concealed in the centre of the gridded farmland lays Kopuatai Peat Dome, the largest unaltered restiad peat bog in New Zealand and unique globally. Acting as a sponge, the Peat Dome protects low-lying farmland from flooding, but in recent years it hasn’t soaked up the excess rain.

The relationship between land and water is ever changing. Significant subsidence is occurring throughout the plains, especially in the peat land. By traversing the wetland by foot and kayak, van der Drift pictures areas once full of giant Kahikatea trees that have been crowded out by Willow. 

van der Drift would like to acknowledge the tangata whenua of Hauraki especially Ngāti Hako, whose land this work is set in and whose stories are referenced.  As well as tau iwi - the farmers, hunters and environmentalists whose relationships to the land are referred to and pictured. Full essay written by Emil McAvoy, arts writer will be available to read once our full programme is announced in April.

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Masumi Shiohara (Japan) has a unique set of skills, he is both a fruit farmer and a photographic artist, combining both in his work for the last 20 years when he took over the family orchard. As a grower he has been tending his crops whilst making plans for how to shoot, catalogue and bring them to life as botanical art. He says "with the theme of the importance and value of food, my works focus on the growth of fruits throughout the year and the documentation of nameless fruits that have been omitted in fruit breeding and object creation". His impeccable, detailed work speaks to tension between the wider agricultural farming impacts, the fragility of our food supply and our resistance to change our lives despite the omnipresent future loss of nature's bounty due to man made climate change, more on his work here on Lens Culture, where he was selected as 'Critics Choice' in 2020.

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Jocelyn Janon (NZ)

Tinaku (2021) is a new series of photographic works from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland-based photographic artist Jocelyn Janon. Janon describes the new series as “Discovery and exploration of Māori culture by a French immigrant in New Zealand.“

Tinaku is a Te Reo Māori word which translates to English as to germinate, or sprout. The series depicts sprouting kūmara (also known as sweet potato, or Ipomea batatas) which appear levitating, drawn towards the sun by their sprouts, with leaves flourishing in the light. Janon sees the sprouting kūmara as a metaphor for the Aotearoa’s revitalisation of both Te Ao Māori and Te Reo Māori - like the roots of the Māori renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s have germinated, sprouted and are now flourishing in the light in the present day. Text courtesy of the artist.

Full programme announced in April 2023.

Late Harvest Award 2023