Rachael Rakena (Ngāi Tahu, Ngā Puhi)
Rakena coined the term ‘Toi Rerehiko’ to centre, claim and name digital space within a Māori paradigm. She describes and locates Māori digital/video/electronic-based art practice in terms of continuum, motion, and collaboration. Her art installations have evolved to enculturate and politicize water itself, navigating issues of ongoing Pacific diaspora, flooding and rising sea levels, and decolonization/(re)vitalization.
She has used water as an amniotic medium to play out ideas of ‘otherness’, alienation, cultural loss, colonisation, immersion, and narratives of creation, desire, consumption, belonging, connectedness and ownership.
In her keynote for the 2021 ADA symposium she discusses Indeterminate Infrastructures in relation to her creative practice, Toi Rerehiko, and draws connections between her practice, whanaungatanga and aroha.
Thanks to Massey University College of Creative Arts and Creative New Zealand for supporting ADA’s Indeterminate Infrastructures programme.