Ayesha Green
b. 1987, Aotearoa (Ngāti Kahungunu, Kai Tahu)

Ayesha Green is a contemporary Māori artist. Born in 1987 Ōtautahi, Christchurch, she lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Green studied at Elam School of Fine Arts, completing an MFA in 2013. Working primarily in painting, Green examines histories of Māori and Pākehā representation, often drawing subject matter from historical sources and personal experiences. Her work is notable for its use of block colours and a flattened perspective and image style. In 2019, she was the winner of the National Contemporary Art Awards for her painting Nana’s Birthday (A Big Breath).

Two of Green’s paintings are included in This Must Be the Place; both Mr. Grey and Mr. Wakefield were painted in 2023 for this exhibition. Green favours the essence of the characters over the details of image making, with large planes of even-toned colour and stylised figures. This reductive styling is beguiling; the historic nuance of the works is highly attuned. The paintings are based on photographic portraits of George Grey and Edward Gibbon Wakefield who were both central to the colonisation of Aotearoa in the 1840s–1880s; Grey was a two-term Governor and one-term Premier, and Wakefield was the Director of the New Zealand Company from 1840-49.

Green’s portrayal of the two men reframes assumptions about their role in history. She states, “I was thinking about whose place this is, and the different whakapapa that have shaped this nation. It was Grey and Wakefield who came to mind, as perhaps New Zealand's type of founding fathers – with New Zealand being understood as a nation built on a relationship between Māori and Pākehā. I guess the overarching question I asked myself is, whose turangawaewae, or who does have the right to reside here and how does the right come about?” Green describes a ‘very thin line’ between critiquing the exoticism of Māori portraiture and contributing to and upholding that exoticism. “For these works, I wanted to think about what it might mean for pākehā to be here in this place and to – in a way – exoticise historical pākekā figures. Although I would argue that they [Grey and Wakefield] are not pākehā, but gave birth to the pākehā.”

Works presented courtesy of Jhana Millers Gallery, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington