Indigenous rituals remake the larger-than-human community

Abstract

and art scholar developed a conceptual model for contemporary Māori visual art that imagines a continuum running between the pole ‘customary’ (art created by Māori that maintains ‘a visual correspondence with historical models’) and its opposite pole, ‘non-customary’ (art created by Māori in which ‘visual correspondence and empathy with historical models [is] absent’). Much of contemporary Māori art is produced in the vast middle space between these poles, Jahnke argues, and it is neither ‘hybrid’ nor caught ‘between’ but ‘trans-customary’: art that establishes not a strict correspondence with customary forms but rather a ‘visual empathy with customary practice’ through the use of ‘pattern, form, medium and technique’.