Shannon Te Ao
Working predominantly with performance and film, the elegiac installations of Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, 1978, Sydney) explore fraught dynamics of indigeneity, language, and loss.
Te Ao draws on a range of existing literary material including Māori lyrical sources such as whakataukī and waiata, as well as poetic and lyrical texts from popular culture. Richly layered, Te Ao’s works enact a compression wherein past and present co-exist, and daily life is inextricably linked to multifarious social, cultural, and philosophical Histories.
Artwork credit: Shannon Te Ao, la rā, ia rā (rere runga, rere raro) Everyday (I fly high, I fly low), 2021, three channel video with sound, 6:20min (still)
