My name is noa hāmana (b. 1998), I am an interdisciplinary Ngāpuhi visual artist based in Naarm, Melbourne.

My work speaks to migration and place– two themes which characterise Moana-nui-a-kiwa The Pacific Ocean. Over centuries, voyagers embarked on perilous journeys into the literal unknown reaching new horizons and beginnings. Tangata Māori, Māori people, are the youngest link in the Pacific's migrational story. But we were never one culture who arrived in Aotearoa at one moment. Migration spread across space and time where new identities were forged relative to the places journeyed to. Those identities became etched into the land, becoming the foundations in which we draw our strength and mana today.

Māori have never been a static people, our sense of place and self is always in an ebb and flow towards becoming and returning. But Māori migration didn’t end in Aotearoa, it endures today, particularly in our neighbouring colony: Australia. When the British Empire came into the southern seas in the late 18th century, Te Ao Tawhito (the old world) was eclipsed by Te Ao Hou (the new world). A tumultuous, bloody, yet fascinating history ensued between Māori and the Empire– where Chiefs, Kings, nobles, missionaries, mercenaries, and madmen came face to face on the shores; and sailed to the edges of the world together.

What is often underlooked, is that many of the reasons for Māori migration to Australia today are in fact political ones. Our ancestors’ first journeys into the new world sowed the seed for Aotearoa’s colonisation. From violence, resistance meant survival. This led to dispossession, trauma, loss, and deprivation inflicting tangata Māori down the generations– and this couldn’t be felt more strongly than today. As the current New Zealand government tramples on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, The Treaty of Waitangi, they deface the entire history of Aotearoa New Zealand, and the efforts of both Māori and Pākeha who fought long and hard to live under unity and solidarity.

From this, I draw upon my passion for storytelling to make the past readable again, to reconcile it in all its ugliness and beauty. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme– just as our ancestors were caught in the liminal space between worlds– society itself is suspended in a directionless state. From this, I speak from the diaspora, picking up what has been left behind, and revealing the threads of narrative that bind us together.