Wayfinding: Ruebena Paraha

Free

Ruebena Paraha’s artwork explores the practice of navigation. Wayfinding is her first solo exhibition in a public gallery. The artist draws on Kahungunu cosmological narratives recorded by Moihi Te Mātorohanga and Nēpia Pōhūhū in the mid nineteenth century, alongside material cultures of voyaging across the Indian Ocean and Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. The exhibition design is informed by the star compass developed by Sir Hekenukumai Busby, a leader in the revitalisation of traditional navigation techniques.

Paraha left Aotearoa, New Zealand, in the mid-1970s to spend three decades abroad. She travelled extensively throughout Germany, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and Oceania, lived in India, and worked as an interior designer before returning home in 2007. Much of her work in Wayfinding reflects this journey, weaving toi Māori artforms with those she encountered along the way. The exhibition includes a selection of recent paintings developed while Paraha was a student at Toimairangi School of Māori Visual Art in Heretaunga Hastings, alongside new wall drawings and mixed-media work.

Wayfinding embodies Paraha’s interest in links between geometric patterns and ancestral navigation practices relating to the stars, ocean swells, winds, clouds, birds, and memory. She maps out her paintings through a distinctive process of piercing and transfer. Initial drawings on tracing paper are perforated line by line, laid over canvas, and dusted with charcoal to mark the surface beneath. Guidelines remain visible, and part of the character of her finished works, resembling stitches, tracks, or constellations. In Wayfinding, these techniques have been extended into a large-scale wall drawing in the exhibition space. Together, these elements form a language of movement, whakapapa, and connection.

Ruebena Paraha (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Kahungunu) lives in Heretaunga Hastings. She studied at Toimairangi School of Māori Visual Art, graduating from Maunga Kura Toi with a Bachelor of Māori Art in 2025.

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