Lisa Reihana

Since the 1990s, Lisa Reihana has emerged as one of the leading artists in Aotearoa New Zealand. Working across a range of media – including film, sculpture, costume and body adornment, and photography – her art offers a dramatic and dynamic commentary on Māori history and identity. Reihana translates traditional indigenous concepts and narratives from an urban Māori perspective, examining issues of colonialism, gender, language and place.

Reihana is well known for her large-scale video installation, first shown at the 2017 Venice Biennale, *in Pursuit of Venus [infected]*, a reinterpretation of Joseph Dufour’s early nineteenth-century scenic wallpaper *Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique*. In Reihana’s digital version, the panorama is populated with moments of encounter between Pacific peoples and Captain James Cook and his men, and saturated in an immersive and highly evocative soundscape. Different iterations of the work have since been presented in galleries and museums in Australia, Europe and North America.