Birth, death, transformation, imagination and ways of telling stories: On Ngaroma Riley

Hana Pera Aoake

10 November 2025

Ngaroma Riley, Tihei… mauri ora!, 2025. Elm, macrocarpa, mother of pearl, paua, acrylic paint, hand drill, acrylic rod, LED, electrical components, 160 x 120 x 97 cm. Courtesy the artist, commissioned by Artspace Aotearoa.

Hana Pera Aoake explores the themes of birth, grief, and Indigenous sovereignty in a new work by Ngaroma Riley that fuses the Māori creation story of Hineahuone with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Birth, death, transformation, imagination and ways of telling stories: On Ngaroma Riley

Hana Pera Aoake

10 November 2025

Hana Pera Aoake explores the themes of birth, grief, and Indigenous sovereignty in a new work by Ngaroma Riley that fuses the Māori creation story of Hineahuone with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

It had seemed calm, but now electric shocks ricocheted through my body. I was eight hours into labour and words are inadequate to describe this feeling in my body. All at once primal and otherworldly, I felt the slippages between Te Ao Marama (the world of light) and the arms of Hinenuitepō (Atua/Goddess of death)*. Give me the fucking gas! How do people endure this? *

During these contractions in November 2022, I thought about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which I had read a year earlier. The weather in Ōtepoti was dark and stormy and it was also in November that my ‘creature’(my daughter), was born. Lying there deliriously, I recalled that the year before Shelley had had the idea for Frankenstein, she lost her first child, a baby girl born prematurely, who lived for two weeks and then died in the night. Shelley had thought her baby was only sleeping. In her diary on March 19, 1815, she wrote, “Dream that my little baby came to life again – that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & it lived. Awoke and found no baby.” She survived five pregnancies, but only one of her children made it to adulthood.

Years later, in these moments, I think of all the tūpuna (ancestors) in my whakapapa (genealogy, but also a means of understanding the world and how to live), birthing children alongside me. I often think of Mary Shelley and many others who have died during childbirth or who lost children, but also the capacity of our bodies and stories to transform.

In a newly commissioned artwork by Ngaroma Riley (Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri, Pākehā) at Artspace Aotearoa, we see a retelling of the story of Hineahuone (the first woman) through Mary Shelley’s *Frankenstein. *

Leaning over a silver operating table, Ngaroma has created a large freestanding wooden tekoteko (an ancestor figure which is found in either freestanding form or attached to the gable of a whare hui or whare tupuna, an intricately carved meeting house) over a baby placed on a silver operating table. The tekoteko is a female Victor Frankenstein, but imbued within the nexus of the story of how Tāne Mahuta(the atua or god of forests) made the first wāhine tupuna (female ancestor), Hineahuone (the first woman). Fashioned out of kurawaka (red ochre), Hineahuone was the mother of Hinetītama, so perhaps the genderless baby on the operating table is Hinetītama. Hinetītama/the baby is a genderless being about to experience the ‘spark of life’, with the freestanding maternal Hineahuone (Frankenstein) figure holding a lightsaber ready to zap the motionless lying figure to life. The lightsaber also resembles a hand-cranked egg and cake mixer. Titled ‘Tihei…mauri ora!’ it refers to the Māori creation story when the first human (Hineahuone) was moulded from kurawaka (a kind of red clay) to form a wahine (woman). It is a commonly used phrase in whaikōrero (formal speeches), mihimihi (greetings, introductions), and karakia (prayer). Translations are tricky, but one way of describing ‘Tihei…mauri ora!’ would be as the breath or sneeze of life.

Tihei – sneeze Mauri – life force, spirit Ora – To be alive, well

The most commonly told account of this pūrākau (story) describes the atua, Tāne Mahuta, and his brothers, who determined that they must continue their whakapapa (literally means to layer, but describes genealogical relationships between people as being a part of the natural world), so they sought to find the uha or female element. Tāne sought out his mother, Papatūānuku (Earth mother), and moulded Hineahuone out of clay gifted to him by his mother. Tāne pressed his nose into the earth, breathed into her nose, and Hineahuone sneezed and was brought to life. This exchange of breath is a greeting known as a hongi, whereby two people press their noses together, allowing their breath to sync together and become one. Eventually, Hineahuone and Tāne had a daughter, Hinetītama. Tāne lay with his daughter and had children with her. When Hinetītama realised that her father was her lover, in her shame, she fled Te Ao Mārama (the land of light) and retreated to Te Pō. When parting from her father, Hinetītama asked that Tāne care for her children and mokopuna (grandchildren) , and at their death she would be their guardian. From this moment forward, she became known as Hinenuitepō (the goddess of death) and cares for the souls of all.

‘Tihei…mauri ora!’ is a hongi or exchange of breath between atua wāhine and Mary Shelley. Originally learning relief techniques in Japan, Ngaroma formally studied whakairo at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. Blending both of her Pākehā and Māori heritage together, Ngaroma makes work which is joyful. This commission builds on other work, including a series of self-portraits of karetao (puppets), shown last year at HOEA! gallery in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa/Gisborne**. **In ‘Tihei…mauri ora!’, the large tekoteko is a wahine (woman), but Ngaroma considers Papatūānuku and Hineahuone as the grounding force of our whakapapa, not Tāne. The larger tekoteko has her hair, eyes and lips painted, while the baby is painted lightly with the colouring on the hair, lips and cheekbones, suggesting the light of life seeping slowly into the baby using the mauri of a light sabre. The baby is a baby; it has no gender, so the body is not inscribed with a gender role. Writing in her 1994 essay, *Māori Women: Caught in the Contradictions of a Colonised Reality, *the Māori academic, barrister and solicitor Ani Mikaere reminds us that gender ambiguity or neutrality is encoded within te reo Māori, given there are the gender neutral personal pronouns (ia) and the possessive personal pronouns (tāna/tōna). Ngaroma’s first figurative sculptures were made in Japan, where she learnt to carve by creating a gender neutral bodhisattva. By continuing to make her work gender neutral, Ngaroma allows us to imagine ourselves in the forms she has carved and reimagine the stories of our ancestors.

So much can be said about the ways in which Tikanga Māori (Māori law and protocols) has been warped by colonisation. It seems obvious to say it, but many of the strictures which currently govern the production and dissemination of knowledge within whakairo, not unlike many other cultural practices, have been shaped by the patriarchal definitions of gender and labour that were imposed upon Māori communities through colonialism. Knowledge was lost in this process. Although I am by no means an expert on kaiwhakairo tikanga, I understand that women have always carved. In the essay *Wahine Mau Whao: A woman’s hand to the chisel *by Rongomaiwahine writer, curator and historian, Tryphena O Rongomai Crackbell, recounts numerous examples of high-profile wahine Māori, such as Princess Te Kirihaehae Te Puea Herangi and Dame Whina Cooper, who were both the driving forces behind whare whakairo (carved meeting house) revitalisation in the early part of the twentieth-century, but also knew how to wield a chisel. Ngaroma is amongst a group of wāhine sharing resources and exchanging knowledge around whakairo, and it’s exciting to think of the possibilities for ways of sharing stories centred around women and every other gender expression.

In ‘Tihei…mauri ora!’ myth merges with the first science fiction novel, revealing the stories of wāhine (Hineahuone, Hinetītama, Hinenuitopō, Mary Shelley) and produces a work where gender is transformed, or alleviated in favour of a state in which we can reflect the ways these women pushed back against the patriarchal circumstances of their lives. In Ngaroma’s hands, we don’t reflect upon the shame cast upon Hinetītama, but focus instead on Papatūānuku and her granddaughter’s ability to transform, highlighting the resourcefulness of wāhine Māori to exercise rangatiratanga (self-determination). Tāne does not bring Hineahuone to life without the assistance of his mother. Hinetītama is born through Hineahuone. Ngaroma signals the power of women’s bodies to produce life, and the centrality of women within all facets of Māori society and culture. This relationship is echoed in Te Reo Māori when we think of the dual meaning of words, such as whenua (land, placenta) and hapū (pregnancy), a familial community or kinship group. Ngaroma’s work is not based on a theory of abstraction, but a theory grounded in and working towards liberatory conditions, because it celebrates and imagines life and our resilience as Indigenous people. Everything she carves is grounded and rooted in her own connection to whakapapa, which informs the winding turns of her storytelling.

Ngaroma’s work creatively brings disparate ideas into dialogue in order to extrapolate new meanings, but at its core, it is an expression of sovereignty.

In his 1978 essay, “The Relevance of Māori Myth and Tradition,”* *the late Māori academic Ranginui Walker describes myths as “both a reflection of current social practice in dealing with a particular crisis and also a directive and an instruction on how to proceed.”How do we proceed then when we see the merging of stories and the reconfiguring of pūrākau? How do Ngaroma’s whao (chisel) and toki (adze) use the elasticity of storytelling to carve a new way of understanding our own time and the way these stories govern our lives? Ngaroma’s work creatively brings disparate ideas into dialogue in order to extrapolate new meanings, but at its core, it is an expression of sovereignty. It is what artist, curator and visual historian Professor Jolene K. Rickard (citizen of the Tuscarora Nation, Turtle clan) describes in her 1995 essay *Sovereignty: a line in the sand *as an ongoing survival strategy for all Indigenous artists, that ‘..needs to be understood through the clarifying lens of sovereignty and self determination, not just in terms of assimilation, colonization and identity politics.’

Layering these two distinct pūrākau together places you in communion with Ngaroma’s imagination and an inventive retelling of multiple stories through layers of repetitive incisive cuts into macrocarpa and Elm. The Elm wood came after a collaboration with Gunvor Guttorm, a Professor in Duodji (Sámi arts and crafts, traditional art, applied art), who visited Aotearoa for the touring show *Architecture of Aroha, *an exchange between Māori weavers and Sámi Duodji, curated by Zoe Black earlier this year. Gunvor and Ngaroma used half of the elm to construct a gietkka, a traditional (and portable) Sámi sleeping vessel for babies. These gietkka were shown alongside wahakura (Māori sleeping vessels for babies), made by Jasmine Te Hira and Tanya Reihana White. This collaboration was important to Ngaroma, not just to meet a Sámi knowledge holder who works with whakairo, but also the framing of the project centred around the significance of not just ensuring the safety and security of our babies, but the realisation that the bodies of Indigenous people who carry babies are the most significant architecture Indigenous people can create. The other half of the Elm tree, Ngaroma, used to carve her genderless baby in ‘Tihei…mauri ora!’.

With a rhythmic, gentle tap, the wood’s strata are peeled back. To sense the shape of the wood requires listening. Its parent rakau (tree) is an ancestor that continues to sing across time and generations. Each scratch at the wood’s grain reveals its curves and turns.

Ngaroma’s methodology for storytelling mimics the guiding principle for how we as Māori people understand our relation to one another and the natural world through whakapapa. A word which, at its core, means “to layer”, but describes both an ethic and a genealogical ordering of the world and presents a possibility for the unlimited accumulation of knowledge.

Encoded within these Māori creation narratives and Frankenstein is a cautionary tale of limits, justice, accountability and imagination. The subtitle of Shelley’s is *The Modern Prometheus, *which refers to the Greek myth around the Titan Prometheus, who defied the Olympian gods and stole their fire, gifting it to humanity in the form of knowledge and technology. Victor Frankenstein used science to create life. Tāne Mahuta wanted to extend his whakapapa. Prometheus stole from the gods. All three faced punishment. ‘Tihei…mauri ora!’ is opaque, and flirts with different forms of legibility, but also describes how we understand and shape many mythologies, stories and histories through a transmission based on cultural diffusion or what Professor Robert Jahnke has called trans-cultural.

In some ways, it could signify an exchange between two worlds, Te Ao Pākehā (the European world) and Te Ao Māori (the Māori world). For instance, when I think of Hinenuitepō living in the depths of the underworld, beneath her grandmother Papatūānuku, I am thinking also of Rūāumoko (son of Papatūānuku, the atua of earthquakes and volcanoes) down below with them. Hinenuitepō probably babysits Rūāumoko to stop him from crying and causing the earth to shake and a volcano to blow up from deep beneath the Earth’s skin. But a volcanic eruption on Mount Tambora (an island on the Javanese archipelago now a part of Indonesia) in 1815 enabled the atmosphere in which Shelley first imagined the idea of Frankenstein. 1816 was the year known in Europe and North America as the year without summer and was a time of huge food shortages, famine and strange weather.

Ngāroma messages me to say she’s been thinking about Taranga (the mother of the Demigod Māui), who thought her baby had died, so she wrapped her baby (Māui) in a tikitiki (topknot) cut from her hair and threw her baby into the sea. He was revived by his tūpuna Tangaroa, before being later found by and cared for by his grandfather, Tama-nui-ki-te-Rangi. When I think of our stories of Māui, the one I return to is that of his death and transformation to become in sync with the moon. Māui sought eternal life, so using his fishhook, he transformed into a worm and attempted to enter Hinenuitepō’s vagina to obtain it. A bird called a Pīwakawaka giggled and woke Hinenuitepō, and she crushed Māui with the obsidian between her thighs. Instead of dying, Māui now exists as the blood that flows every month from the bodies of those who produce life in time with the moon – another source of life.

Ngaroma Riley’s *Tihei… mauri ora! *was commissioned by Artspace Aotearoa for their 2025 Chartwell Trust New Commissions exhibition titled Echo. The exhibition also included new commissions by artists Erika Holm and Tarika Sabherwal. Read more about the exhibition here.

About Hana Pera Aoake

Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Waikato/Tainui) is an artist, writer and mum who lives and works in Aotearoa. Hana is currently working on their PhD, which investigates the intersection of labour, industrialisation, enclosure, poisons, waterways, Indigenous futurisms and how to be a haututū. They have published three books: Some helpful models of grief (Compound Press, 2025), blame it on the rain (no more poetry, 2025), and a bathful of kawakawa and hot water (Compound Press, 2020).

Birth, death, transformation, imagination and ways of telling stories: On Ngaroma Riley

Birth, death, transformation, imagination and ways of telling stories: On Ngaroma Riley

Ngaroma’s work creatively brings disparate ideas into dialogue in order to extrapolate new meanings, but at its core, it is an expression of sovereignty.

About Hana Pera Aoake

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