noa hāmana
My name is noa hāmana (b. 1998), I am a Naarm based interdisciplinary artist who paints fragments of history, society, and culture.
Born in Ōtautahi, Christchurch, I whakapapa to Ngāti Kura, Te Whare tapu o Ngāpuhi, and Ingarangi (England). My work began with a fascination towards anthropology, literature, and toi Māori. In this alchemical accident, I fused these disciplines together through painting to create a unique cultural vocabulary through world-building and storytelling.
Duality is primary theme in my work, extending to things like contingency, tension, and the different worlds we navigate as Māori. As such, I use mātauranga as a tool to explore, examine, and critique these worlds. By doing so, my work presents dramatic scenes and universal values— mainly humour, truth, and justice.
In some ways this makes my art political, particularly in the way it confronts colonialism and it’s violence; which is upheld enormously by theology and economics. My work is not a call to return to a lost past, but to see the wound as a unique chance towards overcoming the drudgery and deprivation we are stuck in today, to ultimately open a new space for liberation. My work strives to take contemporary Māori art to a new horizon where the stories, people, and events who were caught and lost, can truly be seen again.
E whai mahi hira ana i te moana waipū.
Great works are done in deep waters
