Best of Wellington: LISA REIHANA

Over the autumn months, world-renowned multimedia artist Lisa Reihana (Ngāpuhi — Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tū-Te Auru) will be spread across the city displaying a number of projects perfect for both audiences new to her work and those who know it well.

With exhibitions in London, New York and Paris; a slew of well- deserved awards; and collaborations with the likes of Christian Louboutin; the 2017 Venice Biennale representative has a CV that not many people can rival.

Reihana tells me that being the artist in focus “has been really amazing”, however with Omicron and parts of the festival programme being cancelled, “the focus has gotten even more focused, so to speak”. Despite the strange times, Reihana has created works that will still be able to be shown, in a city she loves. “It’s the city I like to go to. It’s great to have a city that you don’t live in that you love.”

When I talk to Lisa, she’s still finishing elements of Kura Moana, a new series of site-specific works, along the waterfront commissioned specifically for the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. Inspired by stories of Kupe, the legendary Tahitian explorer, Kura Moana is a kind of art trail packed full of inflatables, augmented reality and large-scale projections, which also draw on the skills and work of such other artists as Jahra Wasasala, Ngatai Huata and George Turner.

It was important for Reihana to make work which was free to access, outdoors and able to be chanced upon by families, as well as to give people a reason to come into the city and enjoy the waterfront — a key aspect of the whenua down there, according to Reihana. “I wanted to think about children and what they might enjoy, so there’s lots of funny little things that are quite different.”

All told, there’s a terrifying amount of work in Reihana’s Pōneke take-over, including an exhibition at Page Galleries which had just opened as we speak. Reihana tells me it’s gardening and Netflix that she does for fun, but I feel as if the real fun is found in making her work, which with Kura Moana has been generously extended to audiences of all ages. “It’s been such a tough time for everybody, I wanted to bring something celebratory.”