To heal; heal the waters.
My work through HANDSHAKE8 explores themes of talisman, place, land, healing of matrilineal lines by connecting to matriarchal power, embodiment, instinct and intuition.
Ritual plays a large role in my making process, where I connect to healing energies of many lineages, notably Rongoā Māori and the Akashic Records. I work in an intuitive way, letting playful processes lead and inform my results.
The works document a journey through Aotearoa, where I lived by and visited many bodies of water – streams, rivers, oceans and lakes. I moved around the country many times, reflecting itself through various emerging styles and differing materials. The nature of rivers is to flow on in a continuous stream, something I found myself immersed in this year.
Rivers of Time. Silver, sapphire. Hair pins.
Finding my roots in the native forest prior to Handshake8, I was influenced by the shapes of punga wood, bringing their nature and forms to my work.
I spent over a year living nestled in a house in the forest, where each day brought the trees to my eyes, native bird song, mist, dawn light, moonlit leaves. A stream sung to me every time I crossed it to leave the land I lived on.
In time, I would be called to move many hundreds of kilometres south, to the mountains, lakes and rivers. The punga wood sat near my bed for many, many months. At first they were talismans of the forest, reminders of the native bush I grew up near, in Waitākere, Tāmaki Makaurau. Now I was nestled in the mountains, in-between Wānaka and Tāhuna, connecting to an entirely new place and landscape I had not dwelled in before.
One Summer afternoon I delved into a ritual at my making desk and opened my akashic records, a spiritual library of all my past lives. Calling through past lifetimes to help me in my making, I found myself immersed in someone I used to be, as I also worked in the present.
I connected in to the mauri or spirit of the blue lakes of Wānaka, Hāwea and Tāhuna, as well as the mountains around me in the Cardrona Valley.
Ritual states connect to different states of awareness beyond the Now, usually beyond fully awake/ conscious mind. As I channel it feels like a cool river is flowing into my mind and body – a continuous stream of light providing clarity and conscious awareness. At other times I drop a little bit deeper for an embodied knowing. As if I am at the base of a deep blue lake or ocean, looking out at the world around me and intuiting through my wharetangata, my womb.
Time is not linear. It moves in spirals. What happens in the past also happens in the present, and can occur in the future. Sometimes past lifetimes are having an impact upon our present. Worldwide cultures throughout time have always used divination systems to intuit the future and its myriad of possibilities.
Healing is also not linear, it too moves in spirals. When we heal ourselves, it ripples out into the collective consciousness. This occurs through our minds awareness of our healing, and the body’s understanding of healing which occurs in the waters of our bodies, our cells, blood and organs.
I seek to heal through the timelines. The intentions of these talismans of power are to bring healing to the matriarch, nurturing receptivity through allowing intuitive understanding to flow through us as we all seek to heal ourselves and the world around us.
Kōtukutuku – what’s feminine anyway? Pakohe, silk. Necklaces.
These necklaces act as portals and talismanic keys, connecting to matriarchal power of the wharetangata, the womb. In some healing traditions it is thought that both male and female bodied people carry a spiritual womb, their own vortex of creative power.
Kōtukutuku is a native plant medicine used to connect to feminine power and the animus for healing matters related to the feminine and the mother, its dark nature referencing the colour of the stones. Kōtukutuku means “To let go.”
There is a period of time right before one lets go, where everything gets chaotic. There is a build up of pressure, internal stress, energy feels compressed until the letting go occurs. This can translate into a menstrual cycle, pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, birth. It relates to orgasm, to death, to cathartic release, and to the practices of shamanism and magic.
When we learn how to relax into letting go, when the letting go is asking to occur, the process becomes easeful. When we learn how to become water; as receptive as a still lake, flowing as a river, relentless as the tide, we undoubtedly also learn to soften the mechanisms of the psyche enough to let go and access a deeper, embodied wisdom.
Embodied wisdom learns to recognise what process is occurring at what moment, and how to move within it.
Land – Womb – Ancestral – Healing. Serpentine, silk. Necklaces.
“barefoot in the twilight, sunlight lingers between bones. a circle drawn in the dirt, i collect sticks to make a fire. dusk gathers, as does the quiet. stillness. i become a starlit sky, become woodsmoke, river flow…”
– an excerpt from my exhibition during Handshake8 Proof of Concept show, 2023.
I slept by the river, listening to its relentless song. Wood smoke from last night’s riverside fire still clung to my skin, hair and clothes, as I nestled into the cozy nest I made in my van. In the morning I danced and sung to the river.
This stone is a memory, a call to come home to self. To be with the land, to care for the natural world, the planet and our bodies. To pay attention to what our bodies are telling us, and to be patient in our embodiment process if trauma holds our consciousness separate from an embodied state. To trust the journey, to trust the process.
Noticing what needs healing, when, how, and why. Tending to what is broken. Being present with grief. Connecting to and healing ancestral lines by inviting in healing. Every ancestral line carries wounding, of many different sorts. What healing does your lineage need right now?
Koromiko & Wild Roses | When a river becomes a body. Silver, serpentine. Rings.
Koromiko,
A native plant medicine which brings us into right relationship with self and others. Healing for the sacral centre.
Wild Roses,
A spirit of love emanating its frequency.
