Manatunga. Künstlerische Interventionen von George Nuku
In the organizer's words:
George Tamihana Nuku is one of New Zealand's leading contemporary artists. As a sculptor, he works primarily with polystyrene and Plexiglas in addition to stone, bone, wood and shells.
From May 18, 2025, the Ethnological Museum will be presenting three large-scale interventions by the Māori artist in two rooms of the "Oceania" exhibition area in the Humboldt Forum. These were created during two fellowships that George Nuku completed in March 2024 and from March to May 2025 as part of the "The Collaborative Museum" initiative.
George Nuku on the title of his exhibition:
"Manatunga is the Māori term for precious objects, heirlooms and ancestral treasures. The word implies that they are standing - upright. It is also used in the context that these particular pieces are concentrated stores of stories and emotions."
Three installations in the Oceania section of the Ethnological Museum
The interventions created by George Nuku especially for the Oceania section of the permanent presentation of the Ethnologisches Museum in the Humboldt Forum will be shown in two rooms: one large-format installation in the large boat hall (room 215) with its focus on the relationship between humans and the sea and the influences of climate change and environmental pollution. Two further interventions are presented in room 219, where exhibits from Polynesia and their relationships to ancestors and deities are on display.
In all three installations, Nuku takes up the theme of the exhibition rooms and establishes a connection to the objects from the Ethnological Museum's Oceania collection on display there. The contemporary artworks allow a new perspective on the historical objects, as Nuku explains:
"Bringing the relationships between the past and the future, between new and old artworks, between a descendant of the original families and the museum custodians of these ancient treasures now housed in the institution, into the light of the present."
Plexiglas waka
In the large boat hall, Nuku places a waka (New Zealand canoe) made of Plexiglas on the large coral reef display case, steered by five men: the Māori demigod Maui and his four brothers. Maui pulls plastic sea creatures out of the sea with a large fishing hook. George Nuku takes up the theme of the boat room, showing the power of Te Moananui - the "big blue" - and the significance of the waka, which enabled humans to colonize this ocean in the first place. The five men made of Plexiglas hold historical paddles or water scoops in their hands, the ends of the Plexiglas waka are decorated with historical sterns from the collections of the Ethnological Museum.
Gable of a Māori meeting house and ancestor figures
George Nuku is showing two works in room 219: The Plexiglas pediment of a Māori meeting house surrounds three ancestor or god figures made of wood or stone from Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Marquesas Islands and Rapanui, and vis-à-vis, a Plexiglas pediment construction shields the wooden figure of the god Sope from Nukuoro.
The second artwork shows four ancestor figures made of Plexiglas in the style of historical Māori carvings, surrounded by specially designed display cases that carry or hold weapons and jewelry from the Ethnological Museum's collections. The manatunga ("treasures of the ancestors") are not presented lying down, as in the other showcases in the exhibition, but standing up. They are shown as dynamic, living actors and confront visitors with their present.
Plastic waste becomes living works of art
Nuku not only combines historical and modern materials such as wood and Plexiglas, as well as historical and modern works of art. He also relates the past, present and future to each other. Just as Māui once pulled Te Ika a Māui (Māui's fish), the North Island of Aotearoa / New Zealand, out of the sea with his fishhook made from the jawbone of an ancestor, he now brings plastic sea creatures to the surface.
These sea creatures also "live" in the "sea", i.e. in the display case under the waka: they are jellyfish, fish, rays and corals made from pet bottles in a two-week workshop. In this way, the work also addresses the ecological challenges facing people in the Pacific and around the world. Plastic, the production and disposal of which causes us major problems, can be found in all parts of the world and in all living creatures due to global environmental pollution. We see plastic as waste to be disposed of.
Nuku works with it and transforms it into living works of art of high aesthetic value. He confronts the viewer with a new level of the material and challenges them to perceive it anew and to deal with "our waste":
"Through my Māori heritage, I try to reshape our relationship with the environment. For me, plastic bottles embody both light and water: the source of life itself. For me, the plastic bottle is evidence of divinity. This leads me to the idea that pollution itself is sacred. It's not too late to change our relationship with the environment and get closer to the plastic that affects every aspect of our lives today."
Participants
George Tamihana Nuku (*1964 in Omahu, Aotearoa/New Zealand) is one of New Zealand's leading contemporary artists. As a sculptor, he works with stone, bone, wood, shells, polystyrene and Plexiglas. In his works, he constantly questions the relationships between humans, nature and culture, using millennia-old traditional elements of Māori culture to juxtapose them with contemporary themes such as decolonization, repatriation and reconciliation.
His works are exhibited internationally, for example at the British Museum (London), the Cambridge Museum of Archeaology & Anthropology and the Musée du Quai Branly (Paris). His last major solo exhibition was organized in 2022 under the title "Oceans. Collections. Reflections" at the Weltmuseum Wien.
Partner
The exhibition project is part of the initiative "The Collaborative Museum" (CoMuse) of the Ethnologisches Museum and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst. CoMuse aims to develop multi-perspective approaches to collection-based research and to test new formats for collaborative processes in order to sustainably intensify the decolonization and diversification of museum practice.
- free of charge
- Languages: German, English
- Location: Oceania, 2nd floor
- Opening hours: Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun: 10:30 - 18:30; Tue: closed
This content has been machine translated.Price information:
Admission free
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