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

Born to a British mother and Māori father, I grew up in Ōtautahi before moving to London in 2016. There my familiar yet idyllic world became juxtaposed by a confronting yet thrilling one. In this formative period, familiarity lingered on where I learned to make a virtue out of my peculiarities. From witnessing Brexit, to halls of stolen artefacts, to Basquiat's Boom For Real exhibition at the Barbican (2017) – an enthusiasm for art, culture, and history was sowed. But more importantly, in the cultural melting pot that London is, being Māori became a point of introspection. Although it was nice to be a rat in the sink of vice, this second home ignited a deeper understanding of my inherent link between identity, migration, and place.

Mā te ngākau aroha koe e ārahi. As one door closed another opened, back to the South Pacific, . Despite landing in a city that would eventually hold the record for the longest lock-down (245 days), I hit the books, earning a degree in English Literature and Anthropology. As the world recoiled into conspiracy and isolation, I sharpened my ability to read and write. Every blank page is a chance to try again. What was dormant eventually passed, and out of effort came my voice.

What’s been cultivated specifically is an ability to step in and out of Te Ao Māori– a world that is both spiritually potent and politically roused. As this other world turns faster and faster it gets hotter and hotter. In the age of digital media, dissociation and insecurity make being a writer a difficult pursuit. Nonetheless, my passion for storytelling remains where painting is the coup de grâce in my methodology. Painting is capturing a moment, scene, or image — temporal relief from a missing future. It carries forward the Māori worldview of ‘kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua’, I walk into the future with my eyes fixed on the past. It emphasises the importance of history and culture as the basis of knowledge with which we can critique the social, economic, and political forms we live in. For Māori, colonialism suspended our ancestors in a liminal space between worlds. Here I’m reminded that history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes. From lines of orators I speak from the diaspora, picking up what has been left behind, revealing threads of narrative that bind us together.