Biography
Tracey Tawhiao (Ngai te Rangi, Whakatohea, Tuwharetoa) was born in 1967. She is a multi-skilled contemporary artist who has studied and worked in a variety of fields. She is a writer, poet, filmmaker, qualified lawyer and practising artist. Her artworks convey the breadth of her experience and her position as a Maori woman in a European-dominated society. She created the House of Taonga Salon, including a manifesto and rooms for gathering emerging artists and exhibitions. She is published in a series of documentaries anthologies and art books. Te Papa Press’s 'Taiawhio: Conversations with Contemporary Artists' edited by Huhana Smith includes a chapter about Tawhiao and one of her artworks features on the cover of the publication.
Her practice employs the unconventional art material of newspaper. She rewrites the news in symbols and decolonizes mindset by obscuring certain words in a headline or passages of an article she changes the focus of each news item and subverts the entire newspaper leaving a poem in paint.
The symbols she uses are sourced from her Maori whakapapa (heritage). She has created her own visual language that is distinct and imperfect, the place she says, all perfection dwells.
She also paints vinyl with a Posca pen flow, and has created illustration-based installations in Paris, Los Angeles, Taipei. They are wordless poetry in paint. They are the new old.
Tawhiao’s focus is strongly on the potency of symbol and she uses it to overwhelm the world with her cultural perspective of the evolution of light and people. An artist working in the spirit of renaissance, she is contributing a breath of fresh air to her culture and is very well known in New Zealand for her unique and dynamic approach to art.