Last Thursday, a small group of second years had the chance to participate in an artistic workshop, focusing on indigenous Pacific motifs and designs. Indeed, in the context of our class, Empowering Female Narratives in the Pacific, professor Jacqueline Charles Rault, specialist of contemporary artists in the Pacific, introduced us to the Māori artist Tracy Tawhiao.
Tawhiao, originally educated as a lawyer, is one of the most prolific artists of Aotearoa today. Through her academic background, Tawhiao’s acute awareness of Māori rights, histories and related issues allows her to bring a unique perspective on modern-day interpretations. Indeed, Tawhiao often projects her artistic vison onto newspaper pages. This particularity comes from her grandparent’s home on Matakana Island. Indeed, as the interior of the home was plastered with newspapers for insolation, Tawhiao decided to paint over them to brighten the home. Today, she uses newspapers as her most popular medium of choice. With these, her process begins by identifying words or phrases in the headlines and articles, seeing what speaks to her. Once an ensemble is designated, she then proceeds to paint over the paper, leaving apparent and creating a mise en scène around the designated idioms. This process comes to her naturally, with little planning coming ahead. Shapes, colors, motifs and designs flow freely from paintbrush to paper. Beyond paint, Tawhiao also explores the art of poetry. Here, words drawn from the page feed into her contemporary view of Māori culture to create inspiring poetry.
Inspired by this free flowing artistic process, professor Charles Rault organised an atelier for the students of her class. Here, we began by observing traditional Māori and Pacific island motifs. Once inspired, we took to our pencils and roughly sketched our own designs. Here, the students were encouraged to first identify a design, representative of themselves; much like Tawhiao’s repetitive use of fish in her work.
The next step was attacking the paper itself. Each student was distributed their own page at random, each having to work with whatever theme came up at random: feminist issues, food critics, Covid-19, fashion etc. First sketching our painted blocks and organising our work, because yes, we may need a little more premeditation then Tawhiao, to compensate for lack of talent.
Next came the fun part. Professor Charles Rault brought out the acrylic paints, and we were off. White, blue, pink, black, green, red and even gold. Students carefully laid out the flats to cover undesirable texts, leaving apparent the key quotes chosen. Shortly, activist mottos arose from our food critics and fashion blogs. Students experimented with Pacific motifs, more specifically Māori ones, such as korus that were very popular.
Shortly after, Director Michael Hauchecorne joined in on the fun. He stopped by our classroom to explore the Pacific islands for himself, as well as a little painting fun.
After these four hours spent crating, laughing and painting, the class produced a collection of revisionist newspapers, with themes spreading from colonialism, art, women’s rights and more. If you’re curious to find out more and check out our breathtaking art, come down to the entrance hall of campus to be transported into Tracy Tawhiao’s universe.
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