Oli Ula introduces my great-great-grandparents through passed-down objects tucked away in the cupboards of my childhood home. Stories of migration, internment, and collecting of measina and taonga are drawn from this family archive.
Still from Oli Ula. October 2019 – July 2020. HD video, 12m 28s.
Oli Ula is chapter two of Moana Calling Me Home, a series of moving-image works from a Master of Visual Arts. This transformational research project is a haerenga — a journey — of reconnection with whakapapa, with ancestral relationships, and with Te Moananui a Kiwa: the ocean and her islands from which these relationships emerged.