As the Arabian Peninsula continues its ascendance as a global hub for the arts—marked by an ever-expanding array of world-class museums, cultural institutions, and performance venues, with festivals and art fairs abounding throughout—the Emirate of Sharjah, U.A.E., leads the way in celebrating Indigenous contemporary art and artists. This year’s “Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry” featured more than 40 such artists (out of over 190 total) from every continent and across five distinct curatorial programs; the majority presented in that of Megan Tamati-Quennell (Ātiawa, Ngāti Mutunga, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāi Tahu, Waitaha), a preeminent curator and scholar of Māori and (other) Indigenous contemporary art. Cristina Verán recently spoke with Tamati-Quennell about this special collaboration and more.
Cristina Verán: Please share a bit about how your professional journey in the arts began.
Megan Tamati: Well, when I’d first left university, back in the ‘80s, (what was then called) the Department of Māori Affairs was trying to get more Māori people working in the media, and I ended up doing a journalism course through them. I’d always loved art, so I started writing a newspaper arts column called “In Town Tonight.” Through that, I received an invitation to preview a major exhibition called “Te Māori” (The Māori) that had just returned home from a long journey, after premiering at The Met Museum in New York. It had a profound impact on me.
Megan Tamati-Quennell. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation. Photo by Danko Stjepanovic.
CV: “Te Māori”—in terms of its scale, scope, and deliberate contextualization relative to contemporary, rather than ethnographic, art—sparked a paradigm shift in the expectations and relationships between mainstream institutions and Māori art and artists outside of Aotearoa New Zealand. How did you see this play out, back home?
MTQ: People started saying to the museums here, “OK, you've done all these shows of traditional carvings, but where's the work that's being made now?”—which helped to eventually open space for contemporary Māori art in that universe. It had been kept outside of everything; not part of the contemporary art discourse, for the most part. Until then, Māori was something exhibited at, say, marae or in school hallways, not art galleries. And yet, at the same time, it wasn't part of the usual Māori discourse (which hadn’t yet become interested in this new kind of Māori art).
I found it exciting to connect with those who weren’t just talking about, but also actually making new works to speak to and about our current realities, as Māori. And I saw an opportunity. Soon after, I began an internship at the National Art Gallery in Wellington, and that’s when I finally found my calling.
"Untitled (25° 21' 11.1" N 55° 24' 43.9" E)" by Australian artist Daniel Boyd (Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Bundjalung, Yuggera, Ni-Vanuatu).
CV: How did those interests begin to draw you toward the vocation, if you will, of curation?
MTQ: From that internship, I moved into the roles of trainee curator, assistant curator, and then, for a time, as a curator invited to work (without a portfolio yet) on projects for the opening of "Te Papa" (Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand). I learned about curatorial practice while on the job—the old-fashioned way. I loved working with art and artists, making shows, and speaking through exhibitions became my favorite form of communication.
I’ve spent much of my life, since then, ensuring that there's a Māori voice within modern and contemporary art—not only a Māori voice, but a voice for other First Nations, too.
“Veritas” by Kaili Chun (Kanaka ‘Ōiwi, Hawai’i).
CV: Your career is marked throughout by visionary leadership that continues to steward, galvanize, and elevate the continued rise of Indigenous contemporary art and artists, both at home in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. How did this journey bring you to Sharjah?
MTQ: The story goes back to London in 2018, when a major exhibition, “Oceania”, was presented at the Royal Academy of Art. It was a kind of ethnographic anthropological show of taonga—“cultural treasure,” you could say, that has whakapapa (genealogy) and is imbued with mana (power and prestige)—along with some contemporary art from the Pacific region as well.
Curators Nicholas Thomas and Peter Brunt included a special piece in it that I had bought for the collection at Te Papa Museum: a red Steinway piano carved by Māori artist Michael Parekōwhai (Ngāriki Rotoawe, Ngāti Whakarongo) into a work he called “He Kōrero Pūrakau mo Te Awanui o Te Motu: Story of a New Zealand River”—a piece now understood as taonga—that I’d been asked to look after as its kaitiaki (guardian). Among works from others like Toloi Havini (Nakas/Hakö, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea), Lisa Reihana (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tū), John Pule (Niue), and Fiona Partington (Ngāi Tahu/ Kāti Māmoe/ Ngāti Kahungunu)—pieces that fit well within that space—Michael's piano just sort of sat there, uncomfortably, I would say; completely different from everything else in it.
I delivered a paper about it for a symposium at London’s Royal Academy of Art and, from that, the Academy director invited me to speak at a cultural summit in Abu Dhabi the following year. It was there and then that I first met Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, President of the Sharjah Art Foundation. She, in turn, invited me to speak at the Foundation’s annual March Meeting.
"Ihi: Awa Herea: Braided Rivers," featuring vocalist Mere Tokorahi Boynton (Te Aitanga a Mahāki, Ngāti Oneone, Ngāi Tūhoe), with pianist Liam Wooding (Te Atihaunui a Pāpārangi, Ngāti Tuera, and Ngāti Hinearo) playing the famed red piano "He Kōrero Pūrakau mo Te Awanui o Te Motu: Story of a New Zealand River," by Michael Parekōwhai (Ngāriki Rotoawe, Ngāti Whakarongo).
CV: Did she already have some familiarity with and interest in contemporary Māori art at the time?
MTQ: Yes. She mentioned wanting to bring two Māori artists, Robin Kahukiwa (Ngāti Porou/Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti/Ngāti Kōnohi/Te Whānau-a-Ruataupare) and Kahurangiariki Smith (Te Arawa/ Rongowhakaata/ Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki) for the next Sharjah Biennial, and asked if I could connect her with them.
Some time after, Hoor reached out again to say that she was going to Sydney for a meeting of the International Biennial Association and would like to stop over in New Zealand. Happily, I organized an itinerary and did studio visits with her up and down the country. She fell in love with the work of Emily Karaka (Ngāti Tai ki Tāmaki/ Ngati Hine/ Ngāpuhi), an artist who—in a career spanning 60 years or so—had never had either a major solo exhibition or even a survey show. Hoor proposed that we do a project together focused on Emily’s art and her practice, an extraordinary opportunity.
CV: A stroke of kismet, it would seem.
MTW: Yes. We got on very well, and when I mentioned that there were certain things I’d really been wanting to do but couldn't, as a curator in New Zealand, Hoor offered me the platform to do them for the Biennial. I’d always wanted to be part of something like this, where I’d be given the freedom to do anything and include anyone I wished in my own program.
“Operation Buffalo” by Yhonnie Scarce (Kokata/ Nukunu, Australia).
CV: How did your vision for this come together, and what would you describe as a central thread connecting all of its parts to the eventual whole?
MTQ: I wanted to do something that would speak to commonalities found among all of humanity, but especially those shared by Indigenous Peoples—such as being in relationship with land and place, over time. For most of the artists, Sharjah was far from home, and they’d had limited prior engagement in and with the Middle East. So it was important for me to do a lot of site visits with them. Key questions I asked of myself and the others, in the planning, included: What are one’s responsibilities while in somebody else's land? And, how does this land inform how we operate?
"From 'Āhua: a beautiful hesitation" by Fiona Pardington (Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe, Ngāti Kahungunu).
CV: By what criteria did you consider and ultimately finalize who, what, and from where to include?
MTQ: To feature this number of Māori and First Nations artists was truly significant. What it came down to, for me, was just choosing artists with whom I felt some kind of synergy. Some, I’d worked with for 30 or more years, and so already had a real engagement with their practice. Others I hadn’t yet worked with, but always wanted to. I wanted my program to be both Indigenous-forward and also female-forward, and I was especially interested in artists who’d not been featured in Biennials before and did not, as yet, have a big profile.
"Whakamoemoeā" by Luke Willis Thompson (Fiji/ New Zealand).
CV: Please share some examples where the land/place connection was most apparent and meaningful, and what inspired your linking of specific artists and places together.
MTQ: I chose a building that’s known in Sharjah as the Flying Saucer to present the work of Australian artist Daniel Boyd (Kudjala/ Ghungalu/ Wangerriburra/ Wakka Wakka/ Gubbi Gubbi/ Kuku Yalanji/ Bundjalung/ Yuggera/ Ni-Vanuatu) because I was interested not only in his paintings, but his architectural interventions, both conceptually and spatially. Here, he expanded beyond the canvas to talk about vibration, about space having multiple entry and exit points, critiquing different knowledge systems, all kinds of things. Pairing this with the sound installation “Ngā Mata ō Hina” by Māori musician Mara TK (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu, Tainui) not only added to Daniel’s work, it enhanced the space itself.
Then, with Raven Chacón (Diné)—whose practice, focused on song and sound, has long interested me—we set his sound installation out in the desert, at a long-abandoned Bedouin village built in the 1970s known as Al-Madam. Its story paralleled his own community’s experience in the U.S. with government-imposed housing. After visiting the place, to spend time reading the landscape and learning more about the cultural context and politics of it all, he decided to create this new work with a group of Bedouin musicians as a way to put them back into that desert landscape.
“Te Ao Hurihuri” by Michael Parekōwhai (Ngāriki Rotoawe/ Ngāti Whakarongo, Aotearoa).
CV: What are some further highlights, for you, of your Sharjah program?
MTQ: There are so many I could speak to, really. Australian artist Yhonnie Scarce (Kokatha, Nukunu) was one of the first I thought about. Aesthetically, her works are amazing, but I find what she’s talking about through them to be especially significant. Her installation, “Operation Buffalo,” for example, was a commentary on nuclear colonization in the Pacific. There’s also the photography of Māori artist Fiona Pardington (Ngāi Tahu/ Kāti Māmoe/ Ngāti Kahungunu), the installation “Purapura Whetū” by Saffron Te Ratana (Ngāi Tūhoe), the film “Whakamoemoeā” I commissioned from artist Luke Willis Thompson (Fiji/New Zealand).
I should also mention Albert Refiti (Samoan), a New Zealand-based academic and architect, whose installation “Vānimonimo” comprised an entire room filled with his extraordinary drawings with hundreds of little notations that mark the gatherings of people and ceremonies and such. Each of these was articulated and manifested through a whole knowledge system to do with the vā, which, in Samoan culture, refers to the sacred space and relationships between things and also between people.
"Whispers Midden" by Australian artist Megan Cope (Quandamooka).
CV: The closing for the Biennial’s “April Acts” program featured an exquisitely ethereal music performance, “Ihi: Awa Herea (Braided Rivers).” How did it all come together?
MTQ: I really wanted to do something special with Mere Boynton (Te Aitanga a Mahāki/ Ngāti Oneone/ Ngāi Tūhoe), an extraordinary opera singer, and Parekōwhai’s aforementioned red piano—which concert pianist Liam Wooding (Te Atihaunui a Pāpārangi, Ngāti Tuera and Ngāti Hinearo) had, meanwhile, always wanted to play. The three of us had several collaborative Zoom meetings to work through ideas; to include both European and Indigenous songs, for example. I thought it important to bring together these two Māori performers through this to have, I suppose, the final say of the program.
CV: Now that the Sharjah Biennial has closed, what would be an overarching reflection you’ll take with you from the experience?
MTQ: This is the jewel in the crown of the Sharjah Art Foundation, and Hoor Al-Qasimi has built something truly extraordinary—and unequalled—there, especially through supporting marginalized and alternate voices; people of color and Indigenous Peoples. I feel so very privileged to have been engaged in this project, and while, yes, I’d love to curate another biennial, if I only ever get to do one in my lifetime, I’ll always be happy it was this.
“Vānimonimo,” by Samoan scholar and architect Albert Refiti.
--Cristina Verán is an international Indigenous Peoples-focused specialist researcher, educator, advocacy strategist, network weaver, and mediamaker. As adjunct faculty at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, she brings emphasis to the global histories, movements, innovations, and socio-political impacts of Indigenous contemporary visual and performing arts.
Top photo: “Purapura Whetū” by Saffronn Te Ratana (Ngāi Tūhoe, Aotearoa).
