Isaac Te Awa is one of 14 artists, makers and designers exhibiting in How to make a home, a show exploring the small universe of home and the material politics of the objects and adornment we live with over time. We asked Isaac four quick questions about their work in the exhibition and what makes a home, read his responses below.

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Objectspace: Can you briefly describe the material and making of your works in How to make a home?

Isaac Te Awa: The first pair of poi, Poi Houhi, are made from houhi, which is also known as houhere, ribbonwood, or lacebark. It’s a really beautiful tree that grows quite prolifically in many regions. When it’s soaked, this rough, thick bark separates into these beautiful lace-like layers that were woven into taonga including poi. It’s a material that carries a special beauty that not many people today get to see.

The second pair of poi are woven from raupō or bulrush, which today many people consider a weed. But raupō was a Māori staple, you could eat the young shoots, make cakes from the pollen, create boats, houses, kites, and poi from the leaves. It’s a material that doesn’t get a lot of attention anymore but it’s also what poi were commonly made out of before the plastic bag, foam, and Dacron took over.

OS: Can you share some of your thinking behind the works?

ITA: There’s a lot of things that inform my work but much of it stems from what I was taught by my whānau, and what I see and experience as a curator. It’s a privileged job where I get to see taonga every day and a lot of them don’t exist outside of museum collections. For those that do, the context and materials have changed so much that people don’t really know what they used to be. Poi are like this. People know what they are, but the nuance of their varied use, diversity, and materials alongside the beauty that comes with this is less visible today. These works are me trying to share some of that.

My raranga at its core is an environmentally and community-tuned practice. I quite often weave with what I can sustainably access in my environment. You can weave with anything – including contemporary materials – but I personally enjoy weaving with natural materials, particularly those that have whakapapa Māori. My access to these materials are the physical manifestation of my relationship with the environment around me, or of friends and whānau when the materials are gifted to me.

Another special relationship weavers have with the natural environment is with animals, particularly manu. While feathers and bone have always been precious, the change in environment and introduced predators has changed our relationship and access to them. Where deep relationships were developed around the process of mahinga kai, today it’s more common to receive manu as a result of predation, eating plastic, roadkill, or flying into a window. The raranga process gives us a way to honour the lives of these manu by giving them a second life as taonga, and extending our relationship back to the environment and its wellbeing.

OS: How do you feel your work connects to domestic spaces and/or the way we adorn and dress them?

ITA: Taonga in collections are a beautiful record of people, place and time. Taonga as art serve as inspiration and reflections of culture and ideas. But taonga are also a living part of Māori material culture that belong in our lives, to be enjoyed and cared for in whānau or enjoyed at our fingertips; they also belong in our homes as tangible carriers of story, history, material and culture.

Poi are special for a variety of reasons. They have a tangible diversity of use and function while still being able to carry their own beauty and grace. They’re one of the few Māori artforms that most people encounter either through school or visually on T.V. They are also one of the few Māori art forms that have a life beyond our culture, seen overseas in the incarnations of fire and glow poi. They create a comfort and familiarity among us that adds to our own environment, while being solidly ingrained in the Aotearoa New Zealand identity.

OS: How to make a home posits that what makes a home is the persistence of ‘things’ that inspire us to feel like we belong. Can you tell us about an object that has made, or does make, your home a home?

ITA: This is the hardest question! For me home isn’t so much ‘one’ object but the collective comfort hordes of objects that remind me of places, people, memories and experiences that I value or have had. Sometimes it’s the harakeke that’s hanging or drying in the corner that reminds me of my weaving teachers, or the smell of herbs and spices that remind me of my parents. It’s the tapa cloth that hangs on the wall that was given and made by a friend, or the blanket that my mum helped me crochet when I was sick and driving her nuts. It’s the random pieces of pounamu I’ve been given, or the plant that I was gifted and struggle to keep alive so I don’t disappoint the gifter. For me I always to try make the experience of going home like ‘going on holiday’, and I don’t mean in the sense of escape but more along the lines of feeling like a safe, warm retreat where you can relax from the world and be your best self.

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More about Isaac Te Awa

Isaac Te Awa (Ngā Puhi, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu, Waitaha) has diverse interests across te ao Māori, with a passion for reconnecting taonga to their people, places, and communities. He works as a curator at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand by day, but in his spare time he is an active practitioner of both Māori weaving and carving, with a special interest in the revival and documentation of traditional knowledges, techniques, and their practice. This dedication to revitalisation stems from his upbringing, where he learned weaving from his grandfather.