Lisa Reihana: DIGITAL MARAE

Lisa Reihana has contributed in powerful ways to multimedia and screen culture in Aotearoa. Her major ongoing project Digital marae, from 2001, explores haunting images that represent Maori ancestral figures within a wider consideration of the wharenui, the physical structure of the meeting house. The large photographs are a contemporary take on pouwhenua, the wooden carvings found lining Maori marae. Imbued with the lyricism of magic realism, these images seamlessly blend the traditional with the contemporary. The video component, let there be light, suggests a window into another world.

This most recent presentation of Digital marae embraces a new suite of photographs that reference atua, male, and takatapui or cross-gendered figures, in an expansion of her existing repertoire of arrestingly beautiful female forms.

Lisa Reihana
DIGITAL MARAE