Meet our 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureates

The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi welcomes seven new Laureates to our over 100-strong artist alumni.

Established in 2000, the Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate Awards celebrate and empower New Zealand’s most outstanding artists across a vast range of disciplines. Each Laureate is recognised for their outstanding practice as well as their significant impact, and receives a $30,000 gift – funded by generous arts lovers from across the country.

Introducing: our 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureates...

MATA AHO COLLECTIVE

Award: 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the My Art Visual Arts Award

Discipline: Installation

Personifying the idea that contemporary art practice is not an individual activity, Mata Aho have developed a collaborative practice with fierce intelligence and rigour. A collective of four Māori women, Mata Aho work with a ‘four-brain, eight-hand approach’, creating large scale, fiber based works that have received monumental critical acclaim in Aotearoa and overseas.

HONE KOUKA MNZM

Award: 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Sir Roger Hall Theatre Practitioner Award

Discipline: Theatre / Film

Hone Kouka MNZM is a father, an acclaimed Māori director, producer and writer for theatre and film. He is the co-founder of theatre company Tawata Productions, and the Creative Director and Co-Founder of Kia Mau Festival; a Māori, Pasifika and global Indigenous contemporary performance platform based in Te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui. Widely regarded for his leadership, his commitment to supporting and upskilling emerging artists, and his own fearless and inventive creative approach – Hone is a legend in New Zealand theatre.

DR MAUREEN LANDER MNZM

Award: 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Theresa Gattung Female Arts Practitioners Award

Discipline: Multi-media Installation

Dr Maureen Lander MNZM is an active multi-media installation artist who has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally since 1986. Her work has helped to blaze a trail for Māori artists, and significantly contributed to the recognition of weaving in a contemporary art context. In 2002 she was the first person of Māori descent to gain a Doctorate in Fine Arts at a New Zealand university, and ever since then her quiet determination to disrupt, challenge and evolve, has served as a fuel for the next generation of artists.

DR ARETA WILKINSON

Award: 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Jillian Friedlander Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa Award

Discipline: Māori Arts

Dr Areta Wilkinson is a contemporary artist who works conceptually. She pushed the boundaries of New Zealand contemporary jewellery by calling herself a Ngāi Tahu jeweller whilst moving freely on and off the body as site, and into the field of installation. Her exquisite works explore art as a form of knowledge and practice with Māori philosophies – especially whakapapa and a worldview informed by Ngāi Tahu perspectives. She quietly crosses disciplines and boundaries with immense skill and perception.

TAME ITI

Award: 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Burr/Tatham Trust Award

Discipline: Multi-Disciplinary

Tame Iti is an artist, actor, poet, entrepreneur, beekeeper, gardener, father and grandfather with a bone-deep commitment to his practice. Throughout his life he has used creativity as a vessel for change – moving fluidly between disciplines and genres with a vision that has resonated across decades. From shooting a national flag on government grounds to collaborating with some of Aotearoa’s greatest artists including 2018 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Icon Billy Apple. Tame is a constant innovator, pushing boundaries to tell indigenous stories on a world stage.

PAULA MORRIS MNZM

Award: 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate

Discipline: Literature

Paula Morris MNZM is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, essayist, editor and tireless advocate, whose outstanding career has had monumental impact on the literary landscape of Aotearoa. Alongside her own creative work, Paula is committed to creating conversations between writers: pouring her time, energy and resources into making space for new voices.

LINDAH LEPOU

Award: 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate receiving the Toi Kō Iriiri Queer Laureate Award

Discipline: Multi-Disciplinary

Lindah Lepou was born in Aotearoa and raised in Samoa. She returned to New Zealand as a teenager, on a one-way flight that she won after coming first place in a Fa’afafine Beauty Pageant. Three decades later, she is internationally celebrated as an award-winning, multi-dimensional artist. Her work sits at the intersection of fashion, art and her fa’afafine identity – creating a visual language that has paved the way for those following in her footsteps.

Stories told thanks to Augusto and McCarthy.