Lisa Reihana
Multi-disciplinary artist
Lisa Reihana (Ngā Puhi - Ngāti Hine and Ngāi Tu) b.1964 Auckland is known for an artistic practice that interrogates gender, power and representation. Working with video, photography, installation, performance, design, costume and sculptural forms, her work challenges fiction and assumed truths as she draws on sources from mythological realms, historical evidence and imagined narratives.
Reihana’s commissions include Kura Moana for the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of Arts 2022 in Wellington; Justice at the Ellen Melville Hall in Auckland, 2017; Tai Whetuki-House of Death for Auckland Arts Festival, 2015. Victoria Park Tunnel in Auckland, 2010; Rangimarie Last Dance for Q Theatre in 2011. The installations Mai i te aroha, ko te aroha (2008) and Native Portraits n.19897 (1998) were both created for Te Papa Tongarewa Museum in Wellington.
In 2017, Reihana represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale; her work featured in Stress Field at Hubei Art Museum, China; the inaugural Honolulu Biennale in Hawaii; and in 2016 at the Kochi Mizuris Biennale in Kerala, India; Ate Te Tangata at Pingyao Photography Biennale; and in the Walters Art Prize art Auckland Art Gallery - Toi o Tamaki. Suspended Histories 2013 at Museum van Loon Amsterdam; Restless: Adelaide International, 2012, Samstag Museum in Adelaide; Edge of Elsewhere at Campbelltown Arts Centre, 2010; Latitudes, the Havana Biennale, 2009; Pasifika Styles, 2008 in Cambridge; Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum2007; Liverpool Biennial, 2004; Paradise Now?, 2004, the Asia Society Museum in New York; the Noumea Biennale, 2002; the 2000 Biennale of Sydney; and the Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane in 2003, 1996 and 2018.
Her awards include NZOM (2018); Distinguished Alumni, Auckland University (2017); Te Tohu Toi Ke,Te Waka Toi Maori Arts Innovation Award (2015); NZ Arts Foundation Arts Laureate (2014). Tai Whetuki - House of Death won Best Experimental Film in 2015 from imagineNATIVE Film Festival, Canada.