Lisa Reihana

Māori artist Lisa Reihana (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tūteauru, Ngāi Tūpoto) has emerged as one of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s leading moving image artists.

Written by Andrew Wood February 2025

Image credit: Lisa Reihana, PELT Camarillo, 2016, pigment print on paper, 120 x 120 cm (sheet), Ed. of 10 plus 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney, Australia

 

 

Lisa Reihana stormed to acclaim at the 2017 Venice Biennale with Emissaries, a powerful meditation on the complex transactions between European explorers and Māori, Pasifika and First Peoples. The artist graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 1983, and obtained a masters in design from Unitec Institute of Technology in 2014. She first garnered public attention in Choice!, the groundbreaking 1990 exhibition of young Māori artists at the Auckland gallery Artspace. The following year, her work was included in the book and documentary Pleasures and Dangers produced by the Moët & Chandon New Zealand Art Foundation.

Those early art school years were important. “Phil Dadson had just established the intermedia department at Elam,” says Reihana, “and that was the latest thing. It exposed us to the international explosion of performance art. Every solstice, Phil would take us to Mount Eden crater to beat drums, which was broadcast from 95bFM around the world. That was a really interesting opportunity, giving us New Zealand art students international exposure.”

Successes swiftly accrued for Reihana. She participated in Pasifika Styles at the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in 2006; was commissioned to create Mai i te aroha, ko te aroha for the marae (meeting house) at Te Papa in 2008; became a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2014; won a Te Tohu Toi Kē award in 2015; was nominated for New Zealand’s richest art award, the Walters Prize, for Digital Marae in 2008; and presented the major work in Pursuit of Venus [infected] at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2016. This .... Subscribe to read all articles in full