doodle of Mister Torgue w a hearing aid

tihewa mauri ora! (2023)

Art Form: Tukutuku
This piece was made as a culmination of the many days of my youth at tangihanga（funerals）, staring into the tukutuku panels that adorned the walls, imagining them as circuits, components of a machine.
More recently in the art space I regularly attend, I was given an opportunity to learn tukutuku weaving, and it made me recall those childhood musings, so naturally, I took them to their logical conclusion, and made these 3 tukutuku panels in the form of components in PCIe ports, each bearing binary on them (WHITE=0, RED=1), when put together create the phrase "tihewa mauri ora!"

This is a variant of a common phrase that is often placed at the end of mihi（speeches） and karakia（incantations）, and has ties to a māori story of the creation of the first person*, and her first act of living being that of a sneeze ^{(tihewa/tihei meaning sneeze)}

_{*i say person and not human with specific intent here, humans come later}