I was born here in Hastings, but I went to live in the Bay of Islands for most of my childhood. My mother\u2019s from Pakipaki, just outside of Hastings. <\/p>\n
She used to bring us back here every Christmas, and I didn\u2019t really know why. But it was to keep the connection here. I always knew this was home.<\/p>\n
I went to art school, the Toimairangi School of M\u0101ori Visual Arts here in Hastings, after living overseas for 32 years. I went there to learn about me as a M\u0101ori person.<\/p>\n
Ruebena Paraha’s Wayfinding is showing at Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery.<\/p>\n
You spent more than three decades overseas \u2013 in places such as Germany, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, Oceania and India. What took you overseas? <\/p>\n
I went to school in Auckland, in Mt Albert, a Catholic boarding school for girls. When I left school, I decided, because everybody I knew was going to university, that I was going to do the university of life, I was going around the world, I was going to learn. <\/p>\n
It was purely wanderlust. I always meant to come back here to New Zealand in my 60s, and I did.<\/p>\n
Why did you choose to get into painting later in life? <\/p>\n
I decided to walk this path, partly to learn about M\u0101oritanga when I got back to Aotearoa. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s good for older people to know that you can still be good as you get older. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve created for myself, something purposeful to do.<\/p>\n
What do you hope people take away if they visit the exhibition? <\/p>\n
People\u2019s lives and experiences are going to be in their eyes when they look, but for me, the works represent the exact keys of migration.<\/p>\n
Some artworks reference the likes of the star compass developed by M\u0101ori navigator Sir Hekenukumai Busby, like \u0100tea a Rangi, the one at Waitangi Regional Park near Napier. I hope people take away a deeper understanding of migration and our place in it. <\/p>\n
I know that a lot of people think about migrations as seven canoes arriving here, and that\u2019s it. <\/p>\n
But there\u2019s all the other parts to it \u2013 all around the Pacific \u2013 and I\u2019m including everybody.<\/p>\n
Why is that important to you? <\/p>\n
It makes me whole, it\u2019s about me, learning about who I am. <\/p>\n
Knowing why I sit here, when I came here and what I\u2019m made of, I\u2019m not just made of being M\u0101ori, I\u2019m made of all these other languages and all these other people are part of us as well. And I know I understand why and how now, I didn\u2019t before, but I do now.<\/p>\n
Wayfinding: Ruebena Paraha Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings Art Gallery, March 7 \u2013 May 30 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was born here in Hastings, but I went to live in the Bay of Islands for most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[133197,1628,4296,1888,1342,1229,17881,5194,1364,107184,32142,221,127065,22638,111,43,139,32141,69,90,181726,17146,181725,181728,20863,5257,59353,21694,34534,181727,67016,102],"class_list":["post-339906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-73yearold","tag-artist","tag-exhibition","tag-first","tag-five","tag-gallery","tag-got","tag-hastings","tag-her","tag-heretaunga","tag-hine","tag-how","tag-kahungunu","tag-marks","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-ngti","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-paraha","tag-questions","tag-ruebana","tag-ruebena","tag-she","tag-significant","tag-solo","tag-step","tag-twharetoa","tag-wayfinding","tag-whare","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}