During the Lunar New Year and ahead of Waitangi Day this year, Māori and Chinese artists debut 雙土海葬 DOUBLE BURIAL in Northland. 

The multimedia group exhibition, curated by 蔡杰盈 JieYing Cai, explores the unique relationship between Māori and Chinese underpinned by Te Tiriti o Waitangi through the shared rituals around death, burial and afterlife, inspired by the stories of the SS Ventnor.

This collaboration between Māori and Chinese artists brings together mahi raranga by Reva Mendes, sculpture by Angerlia Oliver, audiovisuals by JieYing Cai, Nathan Blundell and Michael Sue, and waiata by Eda Tang. The free exhibition will run from 2-28 February at The Shutter Room Gallery.

Don’t miss its launch on Sunday 2 February at 1pm.

About the artists

JieYing Cai 蔡杰盈

JieYing is a first-generation Chinese New Zealander with ancestors from Ganzhou 贛州. She is a multimedia artist currently residing in the Hokianga exploring themes of memory, identity and grief through craft making and photography. Curating this exhibition has been a journey of learning of language, tradition and returning to her own roots. JieYing was an attendee of Pāruru 2024.

Reva Mendes 

Reva Mendes (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri, Tainui), a passionate kairaranga (weaver) with whakapapa links to both sides of the Hokianga, has been involved in many kaupapa that connect her to other kairaranga and artists. A local Hokianga wahine, Mendes is the founder of Kōrari Enterprises, creating kōrari/harakeke paper with the aim of connecting and building the value chain within Indigenous plants and fibres and reigniting the fibre/textile industry within Te Tai Tokerau. 

Eda Tang 唐子遥

Eda Tang is a second-generation Chinese New Zealander descending from Guangzhou, China. Based in Tāmaki Makaurau, she is a writer, a journalist, and a passionate language-revitalist. A student and teacher of Te Reo Rangatira, she combines her love of music and language in her waiata, Hokinga Oneone, a waiata submerging listeners in the grief of the spouses and children of the men whose bones never returned home. Tang attended the Pāruru journey in 2024. 

Angerlia Oliver (Ange)

Ange Oliver (Muriwhenua, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Raukawa ki te tonga), is also a mokopuna of Hana Toi, Ngāti Korokoro, Te Roroa. As a mature ākonga and emerging artist, Ange has just completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Māori Visual Arts through Toioho ki Āpiti. She was also the sole recipient of the Collin Post Memorial Scholarship in Sculpture in 2024. Recently her mahi toi has been an expression of mamae and aroha using natural materials and her own unique processes embedded with cosmological and customary knowledge. Her aim is to hold space for fragility and resilience that redresses cultural identity and belonging.

Exhibition Dates: February 2-28, 2025

Opening 1-3pm Sunday 2 February, 2025 (light refreshments available)

Jie Ying’s reflections

That is what Pāruru has lead to: Double Burial  雙土海葬. Somewhere along the line I had a dream. Hāmiora Bailey whispered to me, “ko wai ngā mokopuna”? (who are the descendants/grandchildren/future generation?). When there is a history involved, the work no longer becomes about me. It becomes about the ancestors, and the community that gather together for this living history. 

In Chinese the word for mokopuna (descendant) is 後代 (generation behind), and the word for ancestor is 祖先 (generation in front). It’s a bit counter intuitive to have the future generation behind and ancestors in front. It reminds me of the whakatauki ‘ka mua ka muri’ (walking backwards into the future) and shared values of Chinese and Māori in the way which we respect our elders. 

The exhibition opening and gallery cultivated a space to practise tikanga Māori and share Chinese customs.

Muka taura and bamboo 

Special mention to the muka taura and bamboo symbolism in the exhibition. It was the first raranga/whatu (weaving) skill I learnt exactly a year again. It wove into the exhibition effortlessly. I was lucky to have attended a wānanga to learn muka striping and taura making skill shared by Ahi Nyx. This became a connection back to my 婆婆 pópó (maternal grandmother) before I had even realised. My mother flew from brisbane to come to the opening and as she walks in the door of the gallery she tells me her mother used to make rope that were bound around the soles of her shoes. These taura bound together the large bamboo I individually harvest and transported in my little demio from Hokianga to Whangārei. Bamboo being a resource for weaving and craft in China to build furniture, fans, bed mats, sieves. The house I grew up in China hung laundry of bamboo racks, which was a easy connection to back home.

Kōrari paper, paper making 

There is this memory with my grandparents standing behind my shoulder as I sat at the table with a calligraphy brush, dancing away with the ink on xuan paper (calligraphy paper). In this photo Reva and I are taking out of the kōrari fibre that has been boiled in her DIY bathtub with a gas stove below. Which we cast into a giant pool of fibre with a stretched mesh frame to make the Tamatea kai ariki cyanotype in the image above. In another world I’m making xuan paper in my hometown ganzhou. I wonder how paper mulberry making process adapted to the aute making process here in Aotearoa as a practise.

Kai 

I think kai is a particularly important one to highlight for me. The discussion of what was on the bai san table had to be significant for the opening of the exhibition. The night before the opening I made 粽子 zòngzi sticky rice with dates wrapped in bamboo leaves. Story has it 粽子 zòngzi making is a tradition to throw into the river to feed the living so they don’t eat the dead. The living being the fish in the river. I grew up making 粽子 zòngzi with my mum and it was fitting to bring my food connection to the table. The crispy pork was a no given as “the roasting of a whole pig in a brick oven has been an important part of the food story for New Zealand’s Cantonese Chinese much of their 180-year history in Aotearoa.” 1 The ancestors like a bit of tradition, and crispy pork as always been a crowd favourite.

Chinese bai san ceremony 

The bai san ceremony at the opening was a offering to the ancestors. The three incense sticks represent heaven, earth and humanity. We bow three times holding the lit incense which then were placed in a couple buckets of sand I collected from Omapere beach. This is normally done at the burial places, and 清明 qingming festival but I’m sure the ancestors enjoyed the special outing to the gallery.

Karakia whakamutunga 

The first time I encountered Ralph Hotere was seeing his grave next to red gate memorial on Hione urupā in Mitimiti. Fast forward the page I opened in up in Ralph Hotere’s book was his piece Godwit/Kuaka 1977 that speaks the tauparapara RUIA RUIA OPEA OPEA TAHIA TAHIA. The meaning and these kupu have stuck with my brain as I relate them to the ancestors of the SS Ventnor in the making of Double Burial. How the manu arrive and settle on the sandbank, like visitors settling on the marae, like bones washing up on the tide lines of the west coast. The sowing of seeds like rain, scooped together then coming together in unison, sweeping. How this exhibition cultivated a space to practise tikanga Māori and Chinese death traditions. 

Then having never meet Lenny (who was kaikarakia for closing the show), nor has he seen my work, opens with the same tauparapara from the far north. Goosebumps in that moment knowing our ancestors were with us. Then I responded with ka titiro atu au which we learnt at Pukenga Rau which is a waiata about the kuaka working in kotahitanga to migrate these far far oceans across to Hawaiki. When the kuaka seen to return north, they are setting out for Hawaiki, giving signs of melancholy

Many thanks to 雙土海葬 DOUBLE BURIAL sponsors, New Zealand Chinese Association Inc. Foundation North, and Creative Northland.