A 24-year-old Ngāti Whakaue carving student, Te Okiwa Morgan, has gone viral for his innovative twist on a traditional Māori art form.
Morgan, a student at Te Takapū o Rotowhio, Te Puia Rotorua, has created a glowing heitiki necklace, made from pounamu, installed with a battery charged light inside.
“Being from Ngāti Whakaue, my main objective was to make an interesting piece that held the kōrero of those stories. Not only for myself and my family, but how I could get tamariki involved to want to know,
“A big part of the creation was how I could maintain the Mana of the art forms from my Iwi, but also the carving integrity of its origination into the future.”
The young prodigy is in his second year of schooling at Te Takapū, as one of their course modules he was assigned to ‘flex’ his artistic capability whilst incorporating the traditional origins of the carving art form with tāonga.
Morgan said he saw this as an opportunity to reflect the innovation of Māori and their connection with natural resources.
“Coming from Hawaiki to Aotearoa we actually never had pounamu. Therefore, we were innovators with the resources that we obtained from our environment when we arrived,
“In my environment today, we have things like power, battery powered things in particular. So, it was only natural that I wanted to take this [Heitiki] a step further.”
The heitiki is named ‘Tiki’, after a Ngāti Whakaue gateway that it draws inspiration from, one of four prominent gateways that once protected Ohinemutu village.
The necklace has three light settings with an accessible button from the back and is chargeable as well.
Although the responses to the outcome of Tiki have been encouraging, Morgan said gaining accolades for this project was not the goal.
“There’s a lot of us out there with ideas like this. So, I don’t think I’m a trend setter, I was just following the footsteps of people who already have crazy ideas in our culture.”
As Aotearoa heads into a new year, Morgan reassures that many more projects are on the horizon.
“There’s a lot available in our environment today. Light was only an easy one, but I’m wanting to do something that incorporates water, movement and so on. Light was only the starting point”,
The heitiki will remain in Morgan’s collection of work until his graduation next year. From there, it will remain in the hands of the carving to be displayed for its evolutionary contribution to the art form.
