Iteration 4; Ngakinga
Papa ki Awataha
Tāmaki Makaurau,
March 2025 - March 2026
Ngakinga was the fourth iteration of Inhabit, activated at Papa ki Awataha, Northcote from March 2025 to March 2026. This project was in collaboration with Uru Whakaaro and was supported by The Tīpuna Project, Auckland City Council Creative Communities Scheme, NORTHART and the Kaipātiki Project.
I collaborated with Charmaine Bailie (Te Uri o Hau – Ngati Whatua ki Kaipara) to grow a natural dye garden on a 200 sq meter piece of land at Papa ki Awataha. This whenua is the home of the puna that feeds Te Awataha. The earth here was bare, raw, hard and cracked, nestled amongst a scene of ‘urban development’, the exhausted earth was waiting to be nurtured back to its full potential. We inhabited here for one year, nourishing the whenua intentionally along its journey to good health and growing natural dye plants to create hand dyed fabric artworks and offer natural dye workshops to the community.
We invited folks to join us in building community around this land. To help us care for it softly and radically, with creativity and interconnectedness. Across four seasons. It was a place to share personal stories and collective reflection with our feet in the soil and our faces in the flowers. A place to make art with natural dye plants through a lens of decolonisation and ecosystem regeneration, addressing the importance of sustainable practices and connection to the whenua while the Northcote town center is under redevelopment. But it was mostly a place to grieve.
Ngakinga is a collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and native and non-native plants to co-create public art, ritual and other care practices that weave together our diverse ancestral threads while respecting Māori sovereignty, in honor ultimately of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
As a social sculpture, this intentionally cultivated space will grow plants and flowers selected for their natural dyeing properties to create textile arts.
We acknowledge Mana Whenua as the kaitaiki of this land, and their tīpuna past, present, and emerging.
