PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Wanaka
The New Zealand Post Art Collection
Bowen Galleries, Wellington

EXHIBITED
Robyn Kahukiwa, Tuakiri/Identify, Bowen Galleries,
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, 31 October - 12 November 1994

Robyn Kahukiwa (Ngati Porou, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, Ngati Hau, Ngati Konohi, Te Whānau-a-Ruataupare, and Te Whanau-a-Te Aotawarirangi) is one of the leading artists of her generation. In 2020, she received Te Tohu Aroha mo Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu (the Exemplary/ Supreme Award) at Te Waka Toi Awards, in honour of her many achievements.

Born in Sydney, Australia, in 1938 she moved to New Zealand in 1959. From this time, she began to deepen her connection to her ancestral home and whakapapa Māori (Māori genealogy).

Since the early 1970s, she has explored questions of heritage, identity, and sovereignty central to the Māori experience and relevant to Indigenous people around the world.

E kore e hekeheke, he kākano rangatira is a significant work from a period of intense artistic activity and development for Kahukiwa. It is one of a trio of works of equal size and similar composition that were originally shown at Bowen Galleries as part of the solo exhibition Tuakiri/Identify (1994). The painting unites elements from several bodies of work. The sculptural figures on the left are strongly in sympathy with Kahukiwa's paintings of the mid-1980s, which centre on images of ancestors. These grew out of an important visit to her homeland in Te Tairawhiti, the Gisborne area, in the company of Keri Kaa and her mother, Hohi Kaa. Kahukiwa has commented of the trip:

From this came huge changes in my work. Armed with knowledge handed down by my ancestors, I could now paint about my culture and my people with more confidence and integrity. I began to use the carved figures of our whare whakairo (carved houses) as the basis for my paintings. My painting materials changed from hardboard to canvas, from small brushes to large, and the technique became more expressionistic with layers of colour.

The figures on the right in E kore e hekeheke, he kakano rangatira develop out of the widely exhibited Whiteout series of the early 1990s, in which Kahukiwa combined reproductions of black and white colonial photographs found in the 'unidentified Maori women file' at the Alexander Turnbull Library with colour images of figures intended to be read as present-day descendants. The Whiteout works chiefly speak about erasure of identity due to colonisation. Now anonymous, the women from the photographs have been isolated from their whakapapa. Their descendants - particularly those living in urban contexts - have become disconnected from homeland, heritage and culture. E kore e hekeheke, he kākano rangatira tells a different story. Three generations are brought together: early tipuna, represented by the whakairo figures, a more recent ancestor in black and white, and a woman of the present in colour. Here the statement is one of endurance. The people depicted are bound together by unbreakable whakapapa, a source of great strength. The title of the painting - a well-known whakatauki - reinforces the message. It can be translated as 'A noble heritage will never perish or I will never be lost for I am the seed of chiefs' The mana of chiefly ancestors is passed down, priming future generations for flourishing despite the challenges they may face.

1. Robyn Kahukiwa, The Art of Robyn Kahukiwa (Tāmaki Makaurau: Reed, 2005), 58
2. Robyn Kahukiwa, Toi Ata (Te Whanganui-a-Tara: Bowen Galleries, 1995), 15-16