The meaning behind the Courtenay Place lightboxes

Tell us more about you and your work – how long have you been in the industry for and how did you get started?
I grew up in Hokitika, kei Te Tai o Poutini in the South Island. I whakapapa to England, Scotland, and Tauranga Moana, where my iwi is Ngāi Te Rangi. I’m an albatross and a māmā to a three year old, and I’ve been making weird things my whole life. I lived in Brussels and Berlin from 2014 to 2016 where my queer identity finally began to swim free, then I came back to go to university in Pōneke at Massey.
 
When I got to Wellington, I went to exhibitions and performances and got to know people through projects like Meanwhile, Performance Art Week Aotearoa (PAWA) and play_station, which are still hosting emerging artists today. The first time I performed in public was with PAWA 2018 as a sort of fabric jellyfish. I got other opportunities by writing proposals to galleries and arts festivals and through connections with other artists, and since then I’ve had projects all up and down Aotearoa. I went to Taiwan for a queer performance residency in 2023 and camped in the jungle with 12 other artists from around the world!

How did you get involved in this project?
My wider project Mana Tipua Tuku Iho has developed over the last few years, and I felt that the Courtenay Place lightboxes would be a fitting public place to show a version of my work that gives a face to the queer whakapapa that we as Māori can trace back to the transformative powers of atua and tipua, such as the taniwha of Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Jaimie Waititi was my amazing producer and the project was set up by Wellington City Council’s Public Arts team, who are awesome at supporting me as an artist to do what I need to do.
 
What is the story behind the lightboxes?
There is so much history and knowledge that has been lost or altered because of dominating cultures, like what happened here with colonisation. Takatāpuitanga — queerness in a Māori sense — has many histories and whakapapa that can be uncovered. 
 
Mana Tipua Tuku Iho is about the mana we inherit as queer and transgender people from the many shapeshifting beings in Māori whakapapa, and the natural processes of transformation that happen all around us. The pūrākau (story) of the two taniwha Ngāke and Whātaitai tells the geological formation of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington Harbour – the taniwha go through all these transformations, growing bigger, dying, transforming into stone, and Whātaitai's wairua turns into a female bird, so within all of those changes there's this sort of gender-fluidity and shapeshifting which is seen in many different pūrākau Māori.

Transformation is part of everyone's lives, not only trans people, but we are a visible example of it.

How did you come up with the inspiration for the artwork?
Mana Tipua Tuku Iho has taken many forms over the past few years: performance, wānanga, video, photography, and sculpture. I explore whakapapa and belonging as takatāpui, queer and transgender people; it's beautiful to see the ways that our diversity is reflected in te taiao – the environment around us. 

My work is based in mahi tī kōuka – using cabbage tree fibre and all the knowledge that comes with it as a durable weaving material, a source of kai, a healing rongoā, and a tohu in the landscape. Tī kōuka represents the resilience of takatāpui and has many whakapapa that are tied to takatāpui ways of being (including contributing to whānau systems and whakapapa without creating mokopuna directly). 

My own whakapapa is also woven into these depictions, particularly to Mauao, the maunga who was moved by enchanted ropes by patupaiarehe, who instead of drowning Mauao as requested, the patupaiarehe placed the maunga in a new place where they became a rangatira. Taura/ropes have both practical uses and uses in spiritual realms to bind and channel energy. 

I worked with photographer Ted Whitaker to create scenes of takatāpui shining with the taonga I made.

Why did you feel this work was important for Courtenay Place?
It's relatively safe for trans and queer people to be visible in Wellington. But visibility is not always positive. Courtenay Place is a place that many queer people may actively avoid at night because it attracts people whose homophobic, transphobic mindsets are harder for them to contain when alcohol reduces their inhibitions.

Sixteen three-metre tall photographs of visibly queer people in the centre of Wellington’s nightlife is a huge statement of our pride of who we are. With expressive body adornment and a quiet sense of everyday confidence, my photographs show the beauty of self-determination, expressing an authenticity that will hopefully inspire people who see the photos to be confident in who they are.
 
Courtenay Place is also the site of Te Aro Pā, which used to be on the edge of the water before earthquakes and land development so harvesting kai and using ropes on this location would have been everyday activities.

My artwork offers a mode of queer visibilty that doesn’t rely on rainbows, which are useful as a recognisable symbol but have largely been co-opted by capitalism to sell back to us for the profit of corporations that offer little to us in terms of safety and real freedom in our sexuality, gender, and sex characteristics.
 
Two people who star in the exhibition, whaea Chanel and whaea Renee, paved the way for the younger generations of LGBTQI+ people, and I hope the project reflects the present and a thriving future for takatāpui and queer people.

Find out more about Louie Zalk-Neale on Instagram or their website.