Drawing on his Kāi Tahu and Chinese whakapapa, Ōtepoti Dunedin-based artist Simon Kaan has often meditated on te maramataka and the concept of place and belonging in both te ao Māori and Taoist cosmology. In Te Au, a waka floats small beneath te marama, the moon. Kaan refers to this curved form – a recurring motif in his practice – as a ‘wing-tip’. Part canoe, part feather, it is also a reference to the rock art drawings made by his tūpuna. The word au holds many meanings in te reo Māori but, as artist Bridget Reweti has noted, in Kaan’s work the one that seems most fitting is the wake of a canoe – a metaphor for how each person’s passage through life ripples outward.

Kāi Tahu ~ tribal group of much of Te Waipounamu South Island

whakapapa ~ genealogy, lineage, ancestry

te maramataka ~ the Māori lunar calendar

te ao Māori ~ the Māori world

waka ~ canoe

tūpuna ~ ancestors

te reo Māori ~ the Māori language

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)