My name is noa hāmana (b. 1998), I am a Naarm based interdisciplinary artist that 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, these disciplines fused together through painting to create a unique cultural vocabulary through world-building and storytelling.

Duality is a broad theme in my work, as well as history’s contingency, tensions, and the different worlds and structures we navigate. I use mātauranga as a tool to critique, examine, analyse, and understand these worlds. By doing so, my work conceals universal values and truths behind dramatic scenes or psychologically confronting images.

In some ways my art is political— it looks to confront colonialism and it’s legacy of violence; which is upheld enormously by theology and economics. Although my art looks to the (lost) past, it is not a call to return to it, but to see the wound as a unique chance towards of becoming something new, where a new space for liberation can be opened. My work strives to take contemporary Māori art to a new horizon where the stories and people who were caught and lost to the past can be seen again.

E whai mahi hira ana i te moana waipū. 
Great works are done in deep waters