tauiwi
The series draws on autoethnography, using my own experience of immigration and belonging, using that personal history as the starting point for the work.
Rather than making arguments through text, I use photography itself as a way of thinking through what it means to live as Tauiwi in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
The camera becomes a tool for looking inward rather than outward, a way of examining my own place and presence rather than documenting the world around me.
The images do not illustrate a pre-formed idea; they are the way the inquiry takes shape.
TAUIWI
A Te Reo Māori term for non-Māori people living in Aotearoa New Zealand, those who have come from elsewhere.
To name oneself Tauiwi is to acknowledge that position honestly: present in a place whose deeper story precedes one's own arrival.