This blog provides a visual-verbal snapshot of Maori culture and contemporary Maori lifestyles in modern New Zealand. It presents my own experiences and observations of Maori culture and is not intended in anyway to be the definitive view on all things Maori, but rather an introduction for those who want to know more about Maori culture and its place in everyday bicultural New Zealand.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Calling Bicultural Art
Auckland. April 2009. Ajr
This is the Auckland Yellow Pages telephone directory - a rather nice little bicultural statement called "Woven Together," by Jennifer Gotlschalk.
It's quite a nice picture but I actually don't think it's very bicultural (maybe one can't be "very" bicultural. It might be like being very pregnant).
My difficulty with the pic is that the "Pakeha" side is depicted with the usual reference to modern NZ - as if Modern NZ only belongs too or owes anything to that side of the equation.
But surely modern bicultural NZ is informed by Maori and Pakeha and Pakeha or being Maori is to have an identity infomed by the other.
So the skytower belongs on both faces even if the moko doesn't.
Auckland. April 2009. Ajr
It's quite a nice picture but I actually don't think it's very bicultural (maybe one can't be "very" bicultural. It might be like being very pregnant).
ReplyDeleteMy difficulty with the pic is that the "Pakeha" side is depicted with the usual reference to modern NZ - as if Modern NZ only belongs too or owes anything to that side of the equation.
But surely modern bicultural NZ is informed by Maori and Pakeha and Pakeha or being Maori is to have an identity infomed by the other.
So the skytower belongs on both faces even if the moko doesn't.
Perhaps the (modern) bridge linking the two is of some significance here.
ReplyDelete