Digging a little deeper

The work of Auckland-based digital and multimedia artist Lisa Reihana is deconstructed in the winter 2009 issue of Art & Australia by feature writer Jon Bywater. Titled ‘Mana and Glamour’, the article looks beyond well-catalogued ideas that have dominated past readings of Reihana’s work. “The clarity and power with which Reihana’s work speaks to these large, perhaps deceptively obvious- eeming concepts [ethnicity and gender], however, may have distracted critics from other features of her distinctive aesthetic.” Her current major, ongoing work ‘Digital Marae’, for example, “is beyond simply Maori, of course, and is non-traditional (so, in one sense, non-Maori) in more ways than through asserting a female role in constructing a formal meeting place. The work’s central, critical expression of traditional concepts in new media intersects in complex ways with other characteristics: its lush, glossy surfaces; its dimmed light and digital brightness; its fantasy art and fashion connotations. These are some of the qualities necessary for a fuller account of the work’s power.” (July/August 29)