Ko wai Mātou? (Biographies)

Arielle Walker (Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based contemporary artist, writer and maker. Her practice seeks pathways towards reciprocity through tactile storytelling and ancestral narratives, woven roots and botanical belongings. Her current doctoral research picks up threads from her Master’s research, looking to the pūtahi — moments of convergence and relational exchange.

Emily Parr (Ngāi Te Rangi, Moana, Pākehā) is an artist living in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her moving-image practice weaves through time and space, exploring systems of relation emerging from Te Moananui-a-Kiwa. Emily’s recent Master’s research on settler-indigenous relationships, traverses oceans and centuries, seeking stories in archives and waters on haerenga to her ancestral homelands of Tauranga Moana, Sāmoa and Tonga. Her doctoral research considers the responsibilities she has inherited through her ancestral legacies and, in particular, to her family’s collection of taonga and measina held by museums.

Jade Townsend (Ngāti Kahungunu) is a writer, artist and facilitator working at the intersection of her Māori, Pākehā and British heritage. She was born and raised in Whanganui before moving to Liverpool where she lived as a teenager. Townsend’s exposure to a wide range of accents, dialects, regional slang, folktale and pūrākau made her aware of the limitations of translation and cultural hybridity as a completely transparent process. Recent projects include facilitating Whānau Mārama at Commercial Bay and Hauhake at Objectspace. She has been awarded Artist in Residence at Artspace Aotearoa, Caravannex at Objectspace, Slade School of Art in London and Red Gate Gallery in Beijing.

Andrea Low is a curator, writer and artist. Andrea traces her moʻoku’auhau to the ahupua’a of Kahana on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi; to the village of Fasitoʻotai in Samoa; to Tongareva/Penrhyn, Fanning Island and Fiji. Andrea has ties to both Ayr and Argyle in Scotland and these entanglements of history, identity, biography and place are central to her approach to art, narrative and curation.

Sita Narsai is a graphic designer born, raised and educated in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her family immigrated to Aotearoa from Gujarat India before Partition. Sita has worked with leading brands and businesses across New Zealand and the United Kingdom - visually telling stories through creative thinking and design.