(She / Her)

Thus We Are Inheritors, Of Shimmering Dreams Echoing on the Wind. 2024

Spray paint, mica powder, wood putty, on board.

‘Thus We Are Inheritors, Of Shimmering Dreams Echoing on the Wind’ is a recent body of work comprising eight square-format panels that explore whakapapa through contemporary methods. The series draws on the woven patterns from my whānau korowai, with each square representing an individual weave, each a narrative strand within the broader context of ancestral knowledge. The title is taken from a poem by Arapera Kaa Blank, whose writing honours the strength and resilience embedded in inheritance. Pāua-coloured powders were used to create luminous, mirror-like surfaces that invite viewers to consider their own positionality. These surfaces interact with light in dynamic ways, revealing hidden textures that shift with the viewer’s position. This interplay symbolises the fragmented understandings Māori often navigate while reclaiming cultural identity, transforming the work into a site for self-reflection and reconnection.

Kaia Waite (Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Tahu) is a painter based in Pōneke originally from Waihi. Her practice comes from a personal place,  a journey of reconnection with whakapapa, with mātauranga Māori, and with the stories carried by her whānau. Through painting and laser-etched woodwork, she explores the relationships between process, materiality, and ambiguity, blending customary Māori patterns with contemporary techniques.

She draws from tukutuku, kākahu, and taonga like her grandfather’s tokotoko, reworking these forms as vessels for memory and inheritance. Light, surface, and repetition are key to her mahi, they conceal and reveal, mirroring the layered, often fragmented paths many take in reclaiming identity. Her work is a way of honouring those who came before while shaping her own path forward. It becomes a space of wānanga, a site for transformation, where loss, reclamation, and cultural resonance come together.