CIRCUIT is delighted to announce Hihi Aho, a three-part series for CIRCUIT Cast hosted by writer Emma Hislop (Kāi Tahu). In these conversations, Emma will speak with some of the artists in Rematriation, a screening programme curated by Tanya Te Miringa Te Rorarangi Ruka of contemporary Māori moving image works.
Hihi Aho unfolds from the ideas embedded in rematriation, a concept which proposes restoration of balance, harmony, and connection to the land through a whakapapa of wāhine knowledge. As a writer, Emma’s work interrogates understandings of colonial space, including the lack of that afforded by the canon of art history to non-Western practices. She is led by her Kāi Tahu whakapapa, as well as by the displacement from her home whenua. Propelled by moments of connection, reclaiming Kāi Tahutaka is a valuable, but often fragmented process. In discussion with artists Sandy Wakefield and Tia Barrett, as well as artist and curator Tanya Te Miringa Te Rorarangi Ruka, Emma reflects on the difficulty of making work about one's whakapapa and whenua from a distance, and the feelings of disconnection and loss that often accompany this.
Along the way, Hihi Aho asks, what does it mean to live in a place where you are not mana whenua?
Is it tika to set a story in a place, when you whakapapa there but have never lived or worked there?
How can we build iwi connections when we live elsewhere? How can we give back?
Emma Hislop (Kāi Tahu) is a writer living and working in Ngāmotu New Plymouth. Her first book, Ruin, was published in 2023 with Te Herenga Waka University Press. She belongs to Te Hā Taranaki, a group for Māori writers established in 2019. Currently at work on a novel, place is a continuing preoccupation.
