Ana Iti (Te Rarawa, Ngāi Tūpoto, Ngāti Here, Pākehā) is an artist currently based in Te Mataua Maui Hawkes Bay, Aotearoa New Zealand. She has a BFA (Sculpture) from the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Ōtautahi Christchurch (2012) and a MFA from Toi Rauwharangi Massey University in Te Whanganui a Tara Wellington (2018). Her recent practice explores relationships between transformation, tension, and knowledge. Over the past few years, she has developed a body of work that engages with the unstable borders between land/sea and human/non human through video, text, publishing, and modular steel sculptures. Iti has shown extensively throughout Aotearoa in leading institutions and project spaces and her work is held in the collections of national institutions including; Te Papa Tongarewa, The Govett Brewster, and The Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū. In 2024 she was the recipient of New Zealand’s Premiere Contemporary Art award, the Walters Prize.

Professor Ndikung, who serves as the director and chief curator of Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, and was the international judge for the 2024 Walters Prize, said: “Ana Iti’s work A resilient heart like the mānawa has been singled out because of the radicality of its manifestation. Stripped to the bare minimum, the work shares something in common with great poetry: the ability of accessing multiple universes through the availability of a few words.”