Johnson Witehira aims to be a Māori design hero
Spark presenter Johnson Witehira’s goal is to bring Māori visual culture back into the lives of New Zealanders.
A New Zealand artist whose work was 30 storeys high and displayed on 36 screens in Times Square spoke at Wintec’s Spark Festival.
Johnson Witehira doesn’t just want to be a Māori who designs, he wants to be a Māori designer.
“Our people once were designers,” he says.
Young Witehira grew up surrounded by things that had no connection to who he was as a New Zealander.
“I draw my inspiration from looking at our homes, at our public places and seeing that none of those things are connected to who I am as a Māori. There’s a Māori art on the wall, but why don’t we make a whole wall Māori.”
The biggest Māori wall of Witehira’s art was 36 screens stretched along Times Square, when his entry was selected from 131 nationwide.
“Don’t know if I will ever see my mahi (work) that big again,” he says.
But that wasn’t his proudest moment.
Witehira says that even though the Times Square project is his biggest achievement so far, it’s not something he’s most proud of.
Instead, that goes to the The Māori alphabet blocks project, which is very satisfying because it has a bigger effect on the lives of New Zealanders.
The collaborative project with US company Uncle Goose started in 2012.
It took a year and a half to finish 24 wooden blocks with Māori macronised alphabet and numbers alongside.
Witehira used six different carving styles in the blocks, which represent six iwi.
“When Māori children use the blocks and play with them they can connect to who they are more specifically in terms of their iwi and hapu (sub-tribe).”
The artist is currently working on another project with Uncle Goose which is a further development of the Maori alphabet blocks.
It will be a similar set of but with other carving styles and more Māori-related imagery.
“If I’m making a Māori product I can’t just put a generic kind of Māoriness on there. I want it to be different.”
Witehira thinks that New Zealand is lacking in non-Pakeha Māori design heroes and he wants to become one of them.
“It’s hard, you know, because you can only do so much! I want to design everything and I want to spend time learning Te Reo.”
With Witehira’s full time job teaching graphic design at Unitec and working on a variety of design projects for his clients, he doesn’t have time to design everything.
To make a dream come true, one day he wants to create his own Māori design workshop, where by making one object at a time the Māori designed home can be created.
Te Awamutu graphic design enthusiast Ngawai Aperehama, 15, came along to Witehira’s Spark workshop to learn about his design process.
“It was very interesting seeing how he worked,” she said. “Coming in from Pakeha ways, to learning Te Reo Māori and getting in to knowing what patterns mean what.”
