The Urban Warrior

Digital Marae 2007 was selected for the 2008 Walters Prize. The project had a successful presentation at the Govett Brewster Art Gallery in 2007. The work was also recognised in 2009 in Doubletake The Anne Landa Awards for video and new media arts, presented at AGNSW.

Lisa’s Digital Marae is an ongoing project named with a collective title to reference the spiritual and cultural space called the marae. This 2007 series explores masculinity, power and gender. The work is an investigation of turangawaewae (a place to stand) of creating and experiencing identity, in a virtual space. The artist summarises her approach to digital media and to ideas of identity with this statement.

If there is any Māori philosophy that I work with more than any other, it is that sense of community. I love people and the notion of community, friends and places to come together, so I utilise my work, digital and actual, to play around with that idea…

Lisa dramatically stages cultural concepts using iconic identities to play out her values and understandings of ‘belonging’. She draws on contemporary signs and symbols to show and ongoing interest in identity and the place of identity in urban society. In this series, she employs Māori identities from the present-day atua and heroes from Māori culture. The heroic identities evoke her communities-- family, the inner city, the ancient and historic and are proudly Māori people.

The Urban Warrior is a nod to the Molly Macallister’s The Māori Warrior sculpture in downtown Auckland. Lisa’s version is floating over the city and in front of Auckland Harbour Bridge.

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