Pouhono, created by Kereama Taepa, is a remnant of Paerangi: Venice, installed at CREA on the Giudecca, Venice until the end of the Venice Biennale in November. The artwork, a site-specific contemporary pou whenua, is a physical connection between continents, cultures and creative practices.
Designed to be viewed in the round, this work references the many atua who have oversight of both the natural world and the digital world. The two figures facing the lagoon and out to the ocean represent Hinemoana and Tangaroa – the male and female atua of the sea. The figures facing Venice are Te Uira and Hineteiwaiwa, two atua associated with the digital world. They govern electricity and binary code and offer another mode of unification between peoples on opposite sides of the globe.
Paerangi: Venice, a partnership between Te Tuhi and CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo, brought together four Māori artists – John Turi-Tiakitai, Kereama Taepa, Neke Moa, and Suzanne Tamaki – for a powerful series of site-responsive activations during the 61st Venice Biennale Vernissage and public opening weekend in 2026.
→ Read more about Paerangi: Venice.
→ Read more about the artists and the curator.
About CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo
CREA Cantieri del Contemporaneo is a project that started with the first steps of One Contemporary Art Association on the Giudecca Island in 2016.
CREA works within the Consorzio di Cantieristica Minore Veneziana, a 3,000 m2 site of an old shipyard that overlooks the Lagoon to the south. The complex includes workshops, shipyards, upholsterers, interior carpenters, electricians and a blacksmiths’s shop, with 12 resident artisans.
Six exhibition spaces have been created alongside, never overlapping, the artisan shops, filling gaps in the text in places, over time, which have remained in disuse. Consorzio Cantieristica Minore also hosts the classes of new technologies of the arts of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, a further and very important addition to a triangulation between Crafts, Visual Arts and Didactics that is at the center of CREAs mission.
In addition to its own exhibitions, CREA provides logistics for art exhibitions in Venice. CREA can provide every single step of logistics required to stage an exhibition in Venice, including venue sourcing, transportation, import, customs clearance, exhibition permits, insurance, public safety certifications, installation and event management.
→ Read more about CREA.