KIMIHIA TE ĀHUA

Exhibited in Kimihia te āhua, Te Tuhi billboards, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, curated by Abby Cunnane (solo)

In early 2020 Ana Iti purchased a number of back-issue pages of Te Pipiwharauroa: he kupu whakamarama, a reo Māori newspaper in circulation between 1899 and 1913. Over the winter and during Tāmaki Makaurau’s two Covid-lockdown periods, Iti spent time with these texts, piecing together each kupu (word) line by line, mainly using Google Translate. Kimihia te āhua, the billboard series’ title, refers to processes of translation, and more generally to the reader’s search for meaning, for a specific ‘shape’, tone or form, in order to navigate a text which is new to them.

Speaking of the prolonged work of reading these pages, and acknowledging the likelihood of interpretative errors—in spite of paying such close attention—Iti says, “I was trying to work out what it was that I held.” Te Pipiwharauroa’s topics span sheep-rearing to shipping news, to the arrival of a comet in the night sky; they include the use of custom letter-forms for the consonants ‘ng’ and ‘wh’.

This new work is developed from Howling out at a safe distance (2020, Circuit commission), a recent video which draws on the Te Pipiwharauroa research also. Individual words or phrases are isolated on each newspaper page, drawing out a new narrative in increments from within the historical text. For her work at Te Tuhi, a new digital billboard forms part of the series, bringing these century-old texts, originally printed with lead letterpress blocks, into contact with new media. Across such shifts, the intimate and sometimes difficult relationship between reader and historical text remains present.

- Abby Cunnane, curator, Kimihi te āhua

Kimihia te āhua, 2020. Printed canvas billboards, digital billboard.
Photography by Sam Hartnett.