Takutai Atrium

Renati Waaka

He/Him. Te Arawa, Tainui

Kia ora, I am an interdisciplinary visual artist currently based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. My work explores themes of connection, whakapapa, fluidity, and identity as a young, queer, Māori person in a contemporary decolonising Aotearoa.

I completed my undergraduate degree in Communication design at Victoria University, and am currently working through a Masters in Fine Arts at Massey University.

The moana is a sacred body. It carries our pain, our triumphs, and our memories of the past. Connected by the currents, these photographs weave together stories of love, ancestry, and identity and expresses our inherent spiritual connection we have to Te Taiao. This series of images was taken over the past year as a part of an ongoing project which explores themes of fluidity and the strength that we carry as we find our way back to ourselves. Elements of these images imitate the push and pull of the tides, the waves, and the currents, and reflects the turbulence and tenderness in our navigation of self and place.