New Zealand’s only Māori visual arts degree celebrates 30 years of arts education

Source: Radio New Zealand

Toioho ki Āpiti – New Zealand’s only university based Māori Visual Arts programme celebrated its 30th anniversary this month at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University.

Across those three decades Toioho ki Āpiti has produced a number of notable alumni including Dr Huhana Smith, Reweti Arapere and Mataaho Collective members Erena Arapere, Bridget Reweti and Dr Teri Te Tau winners of the Golden Lion at the 2024 Venice Biennale.

Erena Arapere, now a lecturer at Toioho, said although the course was small its graduates had had a huge impact and had gone to work as artists, teachers, tā moko artists and curators.

“So the breadth of possibilities following a degree like a Bachelor of Māori Visual Arts is really huge,” she said.

The programme was established at Te Pūtahi-a-Toi School of Māori Knowledge in the mid-1990s by renowned artist and educator Professor Robert Jahnke (Ngāti Porou).

Arapere (Te Atiawa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Toarangatira, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga) said there had been many amazing people who had contributed to Toioho, far too many to name, but among them were Rachel Rakena, Shane Cotton, Ngatai Taepa and Kura Te Waru Reweri.

When Professor Jahnke established Toioho 30 years ago he wanted to create a programme that could address some of the racism he had experienced as a young man studying visual art and where Māori students could learn on their own terms, she said.

“So Māori students were taught by Māori and the art history practice that they draw on as our customary practice, as opposed to an international kind of art canon.”

Even after three decades Toioho ki Āpiti remains the only Māori visual arts programme of its kind in the world, she said.

“So it connects customary knowledge with contemporary practice and gives, hopefully, the students the confidence to create any work that they wish to create, be that work that is explicitly Māori or more subtle in its approach. And as long as it’s made by someone who’s Māori, we consider it to be Māori art,” she said.

“What’s cool is we all are encouraged to foster our own practice and how that impacts into experience for the students.”

To mark the 30-year anniversary artists, alumni and current students gathered to paint a large-scale mural at the concourse on Massey’s Turitea campus in Manawatū.

The mural, designed by staff and students to honour the programme’s legacy, features a repeated X motif referencing tukutuku cross-stitch, the marks made by many Māori when signing Te Tiriti o Waitangi and framed by the Ruahine and Tararua ranges the mural positions Toioho ki Āpiti within its local landscape.

Arapere said as another part of the three decade celebrations new students enrolling in the programme for next year were able to apply for a $5000 scholarship to support their study, with 15 scholarships available to help people start their creative journey.

Since graduating with her Master’s in 2009 Arapere has gone on to success as part of Mataaho Collective, which won the Golden Lion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, one of the world’s most prestigious art prizes.

Three of the collective’s members are graduates of Toioho ki Āpiti, Bridget Reweti, Teri Te Tau and Arapere herself, and she believed even though they all came through in different years the programme set them up for success by giving them a shared understanding of who they were and how they approached art making, which translated into being able to work collaboratively.

“The whānau environment of Toioho also fosters kind of collaboration and sharing of knowledge, skills… it’s nice to see that you can achieve so much more as a group than on your own.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand