INFO
| Name | Tessa Ma'auga (she/her) |
| Born | 1989 |
| Country of Birth | United States of America |
| Place of Residence | Te Papaioea Palmerston North |
| Ethnicities | Chinese (Cantonese), German Jewish, mixed European |
| Artform | Visual arts |
| Decades Active | 2010s, 2020s |
ABOUT
Tessa Ma’auga is a contemporary artist living in Te Papaioea Palmerston North. She works with fibre, paper and other natural materials such as shells and pearls, exploring themes of connection, cultural inheritance, and social and spiritual harmony. Drawing on a range of cultural influences, Ma’auga’s art is informed by her experiences living across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa and Aotearoa, as well as her family’s layered migrations from Guangdong, and mixed heritage. Central to her practice is the desire to create mana-enhancing art that uplifts relationships between people and between people and the natural world.
Ma’auga was born in Seattle and traces her whakapapa via Canada and Hawaii to Guangdong in Southern China, as well as Langenbach, Germany. When she was 4 years old, Ma’auga’s family relocated to Paekakariki where her parents embraced the opportunity to enrol her in a Maori language immersion unit during her schooling. Later, as an adult, Ma’auga spent several years living and working across Oceania where she learned alongside local populations to implement a community-building empowerment process, as part of her service as a member of the Baháʼí community. Ma’auga’s art practice draws deeply from these cross-cultural experiences, as well as from the values of justice, unity, and empowerment that are fundamental to the Baháʼí faith.
Returning to Aotearoa in 2013, Ma’auga moved to Te Papaioea, where she and her husband still live with their four children. It was here that she began to deepen her art practice through study, completing a Bachelor of Māori Visual Art (2016) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Māori Visual Arts (2017) at Massey University Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa. She has also learned some raranga (weaving) over the years growing up both in Aotearoa and Oceania and through various places such as the Hetet School of Māori Art. In 2023, Ma’auga completed her PhD at Massey University with a thesis that “unravels genealogical, philosophical, cultural, and artistic connections that flow between Southern China and Aotearoa.” This research culminated with an exhibition at Te Manawa called Movements from Pearl Rivers. The site-specific installation featured gently cascading fibre cords powered by small motors, paper-cut scrolls (cut freehand), and everyday Chinese items woven from harakeke. A wide range of natural materials – including mulberry bark paper, silk, fish scales, clay, bamboo, and banana – reflect the global flow of Southern Chinese diaspora communities, the cultural practices they carry with them, and the materials they encounter in their new homes.
Ma’auga is motivated both by the desire to maintain the specificity of cultural identifications rooted in particular places, such as Southern China, and by the desire to develop harmonious relationships with others across entangled genealogical lines. In her thesis Ma’auga writes:
From the shores of Aotearoa, we may gaze across the sea to misty islands. Visions of homeland traverse the seascapes of memory, aspiration, and present reality. Homelands exist in multiple places at once. In the artist, homeland exists in the longings of the human heart, expressed through the creations of hands. We all must create new visions of homelands, together. Through our own positionings we view the same horizon, and through conversation we gain a broadened, shared perspective of our shared ocean.
Community and collaboration are central to Ma’auga’s practice. In Movements, objects from Manawatū residents with southern Chinese heritage sat alongside her work — an abacus, a mother-of-pearl ornament, a mooncake mould — to hold the everyday traces of lineage and place. She has also collaborated with Wai Ching Chan, producing installation works grounded in their friendship that weave together their shared interest in the language of knots and relationships between tauiwi and tangata whenua.
LINKS
Key works / presentations
2024 — New Illuminations: 10 years of Asian Aotearoa Arts Exhibition, Thurs 18 April – Friday 10 May 2024, The Engine Room Gallery, Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts, Massey University, Pōneke
2023 — Movements from Pearl Rivers, 18 February – 17 May, 2023, Te Manawa Art Gallery, Palmerston North
2022 — Kāpuia ngā aho 單絲不綫, The Physics Room (with Wai Ching Chan, curated by Michelle Wang)
2022 — Waitangi, Whytangi, Whywetangi, Square Edge Arts Centre, Te Papaioea
2020 — Shared Lines: Pūtahitanga, 12 March – 24 April, Ōtautahi (collaborative exhibition)
2018 — National Contemporary Art Award, Waikato Museum, Kirikiriroa
2018 — Fibres of our Ropes, Massey University, Te Papaioea
Key awards
2020 — Indigenous Research Methodologies Conference Award
2018 — National Contemporary Art Award Finalist
2017 — Global Undergraduate Awards, regional winner: Oceania
2016 — Massey University High Achievers Award
2016 — NZ Emerging Artist Award
