A RESILIENT HEART LIKE THE MĀNAWA, 2025

Exhibited in Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry, Kalba Ice Factory, Sharjah, curated by Megan Tamati-Quennell 

Ana Iti’s (Te Rarawa) A resilient heart like the mānawa (2024) is an immersive sculptural and sonic installation that evocatively re-interprets a wharf in Rāwene, at the top of Aotearoa New Zealand’s North Island. Planks of native kauri timber balance atop large steel frames that simplify and abstract the cast-concrete piles of the wharf, while audio recordings made around Rāwene play within the installation space. “I was first interested in the wharf as a conceptual starting point; at its most simple, a structure to arrive at and leave from,” says Iti.  Rāwene and the surrounding Hokianga Harbour are sites of ancestral connection for Iti through her iwi (tribe), Te Rarawa. A resilient heart like the mānawa explores this relationship and “the complexities of leaving somewhere and hoping to return”. “Mānawa” is the native mangrove which grows around Rāwene, while “manawa” is the Māori word for “heart.” The entangled and dynamic negotiation between the natural world and an industrialised landscape is revealed by the mānawa: a resilient species that protects the changing shoreline.

- Hanahiva Rose

Kauri timber, steel, rust, audio field recordings 
Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.
Photo: Shafeek Nalakath Kareem