Week 5 - Colonial Art

The image below is an artwork ‘Tame Iti’ by New Zealand Maori artist Sofia Minson. She uses the traditional western practise of oil paint on canvas inspired by C.F Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer (western artists in the 19^th – 20^th centuries) who created artworks that depicted the colonisation of Europeans in New Zealand, and the vanishing race that Maori quickly became.

Organised European settlement started in 1840, and “within twenty years the European population outnumbered the Maori” (Bell, 142). This would have had a huge impact on the indigenous culture. Their practises and traditional values and beliefs morphed with those of the western world, which is what Minson portrays in her work. Her being a Maori artist and painting Maori people is where her work differs from that of Goldie and Lindauer in the time of colonisation. By Minson having the subject looking straight out into the eyes of the viewer with such mana, the gaze is now between Maori people, not Maori and Pakeha.

Bell points to a number of attitudes and ideologies that westerners had about establishing themselves in Aotearoa and states that art created during this time is “contributing to the ‘takeover’ of New Zealand” (Bell, 142), but art from today is doing just the same. Maori artists such as Minson now have more of a voice to speak on behalf of their people and show that yes, Maori have been influenced by westerners, but they still have a strong presence in Aotearoa today.

Sofia Minson, Tame Iti, 2012, Oil on canvas, Parnell Gallery, Sofia Minson New Zealand Artwork, http://www.newzealandartwork.com/product/tame-iti

Works Cited:

Bell, Leonard. 'The Representation of Maori by European Artists in New Zealand, ca. 1890-1914'. Art Journal, vol. 49, no. 2, Depictions of the Dispossessed (Summer 1990), pp. 142-149.

Minson, Sofia. "About Minson's Maori Oil Portaits." Sofia Minson New Zealand Artwork, 2017, http://www.newzealandartwork.com/contemporary-maori-portrait-series