Rachael Rakena [New Zeland]
“Kaore te aroha (Endless is the love)” | video
venue: 7a Angielska Grobla Str, a wall of a building
The stillness of ‘nothing much is happening’ is present in Rachael Rakena’s “Kaore te aroha… (Endless is the love…)” in which a large Polynesian man is seated in an inky black space, lovingly, slowly unctuously picking apart and devouring a plate of fish heads. For Maori (New Zealand’s indigenous peoples) this total blackness is powerfully suggestive of primordial beginnings and the world of the demi-gods. On the one hand, Te Po, the Great Night, is the infinite period of the gods prior to the manifestation of light and human life; and on the other hand, it is the inky depths of the ocean where Tangaroa, God of the Sea and provider of seafood (kai moana), has his seat, just as Rakena’s be-calmed figure sits at his black watery table. While there is a loving and meditative depth to this work that seems to make it simultaneously prayer and copulation, there is also something Saturnine and brooding. This video brings a South Pacific flavour to the market memories of the delights of food from the river and sea. The lovingly filmed scene also conjures up the feelings of wonder and enrapture that can consume us in market places where we encounter smells, tastes, sounds and languages that are strange and new.
The Narracje presentation of Rakena’s “Kaore te aroha… (Endless is the love…)” is the very first time that the video is shown in its original portrait, or vertical, format. All previous showings have been of a cropped landscape format; but for Narracje the artist and curator have decided to show the work in the original file format that suits the vertical forms of the architecture of the Angielska Grobla apartment buildings. Rakena’s video of a naked Tongan man seated at an ink-black table eating kai moana presents an Antipodean “ghost” of Gdańsk’s past as a leading sea port and a centre of trade between eastern and western Europe.
In work that is both ethereal and political Rakena employs digital media and video to invoke a contemporary Maori perspective through richly-layered performative installations, videos and digital stills. She frequently works in collaboration. Water has a prominent feature of Rakena’s work and is claimed as an indigenous Maori/Pacific space. It also operates metaphorically, providing a kind of amniotic fluid for the protection of culture. Exhibition highlights include the 2007 Venice Biennale, Busan Biennale, 2008 and Sydney Biennale 2006. Rakena lectures at Massey University in the Maori Visual Arts programme. Rachael Rakena was born in Wellington in 1969; and lives and works in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
