The elegiac installations of Shannon Te Ao 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.
Read MorePresenting in the Aotearoa New Zealand pavilion at the 13th Gwangju Biennale, Te Ao showed Ia rā, ia rā (rere runga, rere raro)—Everyday (I fly high, I fly low) (2021), a three- channel video drawing on Māori histories about the tīwakawaka or fantail as a harbinger of death.
Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) was born in Sydney in 1978. He graduated with a BFA (Hons) from University of Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts in 2009 and with a MFA (First Class Honours) from the College of Creative Arts at Massey University Wellington in 2016.
Te Ao has exhibited widely nationally and internationally with his seminal work two shoots that stretch far out (2013–4) shown in the Biennale of Sydney in 2014, later earning him Aotearoa New Zealand's most coveted award, the Walters Prize, in 2016. He has completed commissions for the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT10) and 13th Gwangju Biennale. Te Ao recently presented solo exhibitions at REMAI Modern (Saskatoon); Oakville Galleries (Toronto), and Te Uru (Tamaki Makaurau Auckland), and curated the exhibition Matarau at City Gallery Wellington. Te Ao is a member of the rōpū (board) of Coastal Signs (Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland).
