Whatu Aho Rua

Whatu Aho Rua is a moving image artwork created collaboratively by artists Emily Parr (Ngāi Te Rangi, Moana, Pākehā) and Arielle Walker (Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) as a love letter of sorts to homeland and tūpuna (ancestors). Together they stitch, bind, and share a journey of multiple returns to the places that tether their selves and practices — across Tāmaki Makaurau, Taranaki, and Tauranga Moana.

Quietly and observantly, the whenua (land) is filmed. From the slow lilt of the sea, to the gnarled arms of a pōhutukawa tree, to pīngao shuffling in the wind, and small spiral shells nestled in iron-rich sands. Eroding cliff-faces and vines of trawling ivy cling to the screen as reminders of ongoing colonial expansion — the heavy shadows of past and present. Billowing in the gusts of the Taranaki haumoana (sea breeze) is rongoā, a fluttering patchwork of textiles created by Arielle Walker, with healing plants that bind the fabric and artist to sites of ancestral belonging. Emily Parr documents her connection to natural fibres too, with words rising like steam from a bubbling pot of muka (prepared harakeke fibre) and dye.

Across interludes of memory and time, Whatu Aho Rua flows like a chorus.
A poem descends like mist between ancestor mountains, from the mauri (lifeforce) of maunga Mauao (Mount Maunganui) to the kaha (strength) of Koro Taranaki (Mount Taranaki). The weaving together of rituals, ancestral journeys, and artistic methodologies becomes a wayfinding: a renavigation towards safe harbour in the wake of colonialism’s deep wounds. It is the turning towards and nurturing of whakapapa (genealogy), wairua (spirit), te taiao (the natural world), and practices of love, joy, and continuation that begin to heal the deep ruptures of dispossession and dislocation.

The title of this artwork refers to the method of double weft twining used in Māori weaving, where pairs of aho (weft threads) are bound to each other in a constant exchange of fibres. As mentioned by the artists in an interview for Circuit, these threads connect relationships, and connect us back to the constant pairs of people in our lineages that form who we are. Reflected in the fibres of the whatu (a form of Māori weaving) is a relationship with tūpuna, a restoration of wairua, and the eternal strands of kōrero tuku iho (stories handed down from the past).