Ngahina Hohaia (b. 1975, Taranaki iwi, Te Atiawa, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngāti Moeahu, Ngāti Haupoto – Parihaka) is an interdisciplinary artist who moves between installation, fibre sculpture and body adornment. She lives in Parihaka, her tribal homeland, at the base of Mount Taranaki.

Hohaia is renowned for her large-scale fibre and multisensory installations. These works employ customary weaving knowledge and draw from a deep repository of oratorical inheritances. Her practice is located within the continuum of resistance, restoration and renewal established by the pacifist praxis and liberation philosophies of Parihaka, a pan-tribal Māori community established in the 19th Century as a stronghold of Māori sovereignty and autonomy.

Her works testify as material witness to the persistence of colonial violence while simultaneously amplifying and revisioning the tools of survival (including Māori arts in all its forms) left to us by our ancestors for present and future generations. In doing so, Hohaia actively elevates the arts as central to Māori epistemic restitution and all that that enables for our relationship with the natural world and with each other.

Her current research is focused on reclaiming and revitalising mātauranga ā wāhine (Māori women’s knowledge) in Taranaki.

Taarati Taiaroa

Artist Portrait: Tania Niwa