Emily Karaka: 'Ka Awatea, A New Dawn'
This article was originally published on STIR on Nov 30, 2024
Emily Karaka, a New Zealand artist of Maori descent advocates for social justice and equity through her expressionist canvases, in her first ever survey exhibition.
Emily Karaka, Te Uri o Te Ao, 1995. Collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toio Tāmaki. Installation: Ka Awatea, A New Dawn,Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, 2024. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.
Across a three-metre-wide canvas, created in 1995 as part of In Korurangi: New Māori Art, one of the inaugural exhibitions for the opening of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, Emily Karaka painted the statement: “This Land Is Māori Land.” Neither deliberately provocative nor overtly demanding, the words simply state a truth–that the territory of Central Auckland once belonged to Karaka’s ancestors from the Māori tribe known as Ngai Tai.
The dense tapestry of text and symbols that layers the rest of the work conveys the cacophony of calls to action from Māori people within the Waitangi Tribunal, which is a standing commission of inquiry consolidating claims made by Māori about breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, the foundational document of Aotearoa (New Zealand) signed between Māori chiefs and the Crown in 1840, obliging the Crown to protect Māori lands and resources.
Amid the painting’s intensity, embodied by somewhat frenetic brushstrokes and dripping paint, symbolic references emerge in the form of numbers referring to claims by Karaka’s tribe to see the return of the land and the reinstatement of Ngai Tai’s authority. However, there is a sense of composure held by the painting’s fundamental protagonist: the ruru (morepork owl). Her outstretched wings envelop the chaos, and whilst tears fall from her eyes, she brings solidity to the work’s composition and content. In Māori culture, the morepork owl is regarded as a kaitiaki (spiritual guardian). In this work, Te Uri o Te Ao (1995), Karaka herself is the guardian owl.
Five Māori Painters: Emily Karaka (still), 2014. Courtesy of Auckland ArtGallery Toi o Tamaki. Installation view: Ka Awatea, A New Dawn, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, 2024. Image courtesy of Sharjah ArtFoundation. Photo: Shanavas Jamaluddin
Karaka (b. 1952) is a political artist and an advocate for the rights of Māori people. She has always been driven by social justice and the impact of colonisation on indigenous rights. Ka Awatea, A New Dawn, the artist’s first survey exhibition spanning 47 years of her painting practice and showcasing her influence as a political activist, her position as a senior knowledge holder in the Māori community and her unquestionable talent as an evocative, deeply emotional painting practitioner, was exhibited at Sharjah Art Foundation.
“The unfiltered honesty in Karaka’s practice asks us to question our own environments, realities and stories and therefore carries global significance.”
Emily Karaka’s Ka Awatea, A New Dawn, installation view, 2024, Sharjah Art Foundation, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, 2024. Image: Shanavas Jamaluddin; Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation
Displayed over three gallery spaces, the works are bold, passionate and political but also deeply personal. A mixed-media collage piece, In the Mixing Bowl (1977), captures Karaka’s emotional upheaval when her father passed away whilst she was pregnant. Another work, The painted dream garden (1991), is a dazzling mix of pinks, reds, yellows and greens illustrating the joy of new life she felt upon becoming a grandmother for the first time. The transition from personal highs and lows to the seismic cultural shifts within her culture and her country is seamless and succeeds in casting her socio-political activism in a new light. This is not a soapbox of resentment or rage, but rather a narrative interwoven into her existence.
Megan Tamati-Quennell, the exhibition’s co-curator, describes her exuberant, large-scale canvases as “cartographic”: maps of places, time and cultural knowledge, which are marked with aspects of her very being. “She is interested in equity, social justice and holding the government to account. Her statements in paint are underpinned by her research of the history of her tribes and the genealogy of the land. There is no artifice in her work; it is part of her,” Tamati-Quennell says. “She is unequivocal and passionate but considered, really she just says things the way they are.” The unfiltered honesty in Karaka’s practice asks us to question our own environments, realities and stories and therefore carries global significance.
Motutapu Waewaetapu, 2015, Emily Karaka, at Ka Awatea, A New Dawn, Sharjah Art Foundation, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, 2024. Image: Shanavas Jamaluddin; Courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation.
The exhibition includes several recent works within which Karaka explores subjects, including the COVID_19 pandemic and some new commissions including Palestine Parallel (2024), addressing the forced and illegal eviction of Palestinian people from their homelands. This work, in particular, reminds the audience, especially those in the Middle East, that Karaka’s protests may feel far but are, in many ways, universal. In a world where power, corruption and political upheaval affect vast portions of the population, it is a poignant opportunity to reframe our lens and consider humanity as a community capable of living in peace with each other and the environment.
“In Māori belief the land is a persona,” says Tamati-Quennell. “We come from an earth mother and a sky father and Karaka carries that within her. Whilst she has described her paintbrush as patu (a weapon), she is a peaceful warrior.” So, as much as it can be about historic grievances, Karaka’s work feels contemporary and fresh.
Emily Karaka, various works from ‘Matariki Ring of Fire’, 2022. Installation view: Ka Awatea, A New Dawn, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, 2024. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo: Shanavas Jamaluddin.
In Matariki Ring of Fire (2022), Karaka presents 14 paintings depicting green mountains underneath swirling dark purples and indigos of star-filled skies. The constellation in these works is Pleiades, or Matariki, which rises annually during the New Zealand mid-winter in late June or early July and signifies the Māori New Year, also termed ‘Matariki’ after the star configuration. Upon each mountain, Karaka has inscribed the name of the founding Māori chief from that area, honouring their memory but also placing the focus on their interconnection and spiritual relationship with the land.
The unframed canvases hang as totems of the past, but they do not carry lament. Rather than a protestation of what has happened, they simply tell the story of the inextricable relationship between the land and its people. Just as the stars rising in the mid-winter signal the changing of the seasons, the overall impact of this work and the exhibition as a whole is one of hope: indeed, a new dawn.
The exhibition’s title, Ka Awatea, A New Dawn, was proposed by Hoor Al Qasimi, Sharjah Art Foundation’s director and co-curator of the exhibition. “To me, it emphasises that Emily is not stuck in grievance. Her work also relates to new beginnings to reconciliation, and it is full of hope,” says Tamati-Quennell. “It is not just about mining the past; it is also about extending the conversation into the future.”
Emily Karaka’s 'Ka Awatea, A New Dawn' . September 7 - December 1, 2024. Sharjah Art Foundation, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah. www.sharjahart.org