What's Happening

Juanita Hepi is one of Ōtautahi’s art treasures. She is a writer, a performer, and storyteller among other things, and she is a cornerstone in the local arts and Toi Māori sector. 

She is consistently named as one of the most influential and admired artists in Christchurch and she sat down to speak with us about the myriad projects she’s been involved in and to tell us what it is that she loves about the city she calls home.

What is it that you actually do?

(Laughs) I’m a multidisciplinary storyteller, story weaver and story maker but because that feels quite ambiguous, I am also currently a manager of Te Whare Tapere in the Arts Centre. I am a lecturer at Toi Whakaari, the New Zealand Drama School, and I am a researcher for Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.  So, there’s quite a lot of stuff!  I also write, and I don’t mind what the form of the thing is, but I’m really interested in the story and the kaupapa of the thing.

Are you more the creator than the performer?

I don’t know if I separate the two things out, but I do find myself creating and actually holding space for other people to perform or for other people to write. 
So, I feel like sometimes I’m in an administrative role because I have that strength and in Ōtautahi, we don’t have a lot of people who have those skills, yet. So, I’m in a space where I’m able to support people to do that, but I do miss performing.

Do you?

A lot. Yeah, and I miss just being creative.

So, it’s safe to assume you’re not a shy person?

No. No, I’ve learned to be super confident. I’m also a staunch mana wāhine, but I can be quite introverted. 
So, my work is super social, and I can do that job, but I prefer that when I go home that it’s like a private space, so I don’t have a lot of people over and I spend a lot of time with my own thoughts, which is kind of scary sometimes.

That’s how you recharge your batteries though.

Exactly.

What has been the most recent thing you’ve been doing?

Wow, so we just closed down our exhibition at Te Whare Tapere, KĀ HAPA, which was about the Ngāi Tahu relationship with Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which is a lesser known story, but just as important as Waitangi because Takapūneke was the catalyst for Te Titiri o Waitangi. So, we just closed down that exhibition and we’ve just started our master’s program at Toi Whakaari and that’s about decolonising creative context. It’s for people who have already had experience in the industry and we’re really interrogating our processes, our histories, and what that might look like for us today, which I think is really important because we’ve gone back to almost a monotone way of looking at the world, if we look at government, governance and general, across the world, which is kind of not friends with creativity.

And what are you most proud of?

My kids.

In your creative life!

It’s actually a series of events, but the work that I can think of off the top of my head that I’m most proud of is the work that I do with wāhine – mostly wāhine Māori – in our communities, and it’s to tell their stories – we did a show called ‘I am not your Dusky Maiden’, and another show called ‘A Baby Called Sovereignty,’ which I am really proud of. Also curating exhibitions around, wāhine Māori feels super empowering for me and for those wāhine. It creates communities of care, which wāhine Māori may not necessarily be a part of very often. And it’s allowing them for once to tell their own stories because for so long, other people have told wāhine Māori stories or indigenous women’s stories or marginalized communities stories. 
So, the work I’m most proud of is performance works around those more marginalised communities, but particularly wāhine Māori.

You know, we ask people who we interview ‘who are the Ōtautahi artists you most admire?’ and your name comes up all the time.

Oh wow. Oh my god. I love that. My heart is so big right now!

It shows the impact that you have on people, and that’s one of the hard things as a creative – you don’t necessarily know how what you do affects people and how it impacts on other people.

That’s important to me, because I came out of Toi Whakaari, what I call the white stream, but I came out of these spaces that we would call elitist, but actually they’re exclusive spaces. 
It’s like you kind of need a ticket to get into them and that never felt comfortable for me because my history of storytelling started long, long ago in our indigenous communities and that has sort of been embodied by us and those stories, those oral histories are old and so those are not welcome in those spaces. And so there always felt there was a discomfort there for me like, I get to be a part of this special group, but these for other people don’t, and you see that over and over again and it’s why our arts are so siloed. Which is another reason why I am so multidisciplinary – I don’t care if it’s visual art whether it’s working with Chamber Music New Zealand or the symphony orchestra – for me it’s about where are the stories and how can we tell them in their most tika way possible?

How does biculturalism work in art, do you think?

One of the one of the most dangerous ideologies is that there is a you and that there is a me. This goes to the core of my philosophical thinking at the moment which is around the absence of free will and how at the heart of everything we do is very human so, you know, whether you’re Pākehā, whether you’re Māori, whether you are Chinese, whether you are Turkish –  we all do the most human things. We can be the most altruistic, but we can be the most violent too. It doesn’t matter what culture you come from. It doesn’t matter what ability you have, doesn’t matter what gender or how you identify. Those are human things and if we can find that part of our storytelling and honour that part of ourselves, then I think we remove barriers like race thinking or ethnicity or gender. 
We find the shared connection. We often laugh in similar ways or feel love in similar ways or feel vulnerable in the same spaces. Most of us feel vulnerable in intimate relationships.

What is essential for creators to have in their life?

I think it’s community that’s essential because even if you’re a writer, which can be quite isolating, but if there’s nobody to read your work –  you need a witness, creativity needs a witness and therefore it needs space between. So, you can just write for yourself and that is a creative act. 
You can cook for yourself, that’s a creative act, but the thing that I get from creativity is that allows you to share space with other people, to have a communal experience, to connect in. That is, I think that is the power of storytelling. 
It’s more powerful than any other discipline I’ve worked in, whether that be education or governance. It’s actually the power of storytelling that’s brought people together.

Creativity is a great connector.

It is, and I feel like it needs a witness, or a community, or an audience. I feel like that is the absolutely essential thing that it needs. 
It doesn’t mean that you can’t be creative if you don’t have those things, but for it to do something, to be active, for there to be like a commitment to change or transformation, I think it does need a witness.

That’s true – think about all the galleries and if no one witnessed the paintings, well, then there’d just be pictures that had been painted that no one knew about.

They’re kept alive because they still have an audience. That’s something that makes me quite sad and pōuri about a lot of work and museums and galleries. 
A lot of work is hidden away, and those works are lonely. They need touch and smell and people’s eyes on them.

What inspires you about Ōtautahi?

Oh my God. Everything!  I love this city; I absolutely love it. 
I know that there are the cliché ideologies about Christchurch being racist, but what I love about Ōtautahi is that you find some of the greatest artists that come out of Aotearoa in this city. I think it’s something to do with the geography – it informs a lot of what we do and who we are. There’s a sense of isolation and things seem epic around us. So, our dreams and our visions are big and epic, and there’s a freedom in that. 
 You can really dream here. I love the whenua here – I’m Ngāi Tahu so I’m totally biased – but the whenua feeds me. I love that our Council is really on board with the arts, our arts team go above and beyond, and I think that a lot of people don’t know that about our council arts team – just how much work they’re doing at the grassroots level as well as at the governance level to ensure that we have spaces to work. Having said that, we’re an under resourced industry.

And underestimated, I think.

Exactly. But because of that, we have to work together. So we’re sharing resource, we’re sharing each other. 
We’re sharing time, space, energy. And so, because of that it keeps us really connected but the silos can be really disconnecting. That’s a challenge for the future if our industry grows. 
Again, I come back to communities of care, and I think about this concept as like a Marae – where everyone has a role, everyone has responsibility, and everyone is valued. The other reason I love Ōtautahi  is because I am rebellious. 
People say a lot of shitty things about Ōtautahi and I want challenge those notions all the time.

I imagine you’re talking about the same old tropes of Christchurch being called traditional and conservative and racist – do you think it’s fair that Christchurch gets labelled with this?

Absolutely not. 
Racism is an ideology, it’s not a place.  It’s everywhere. And the thing about Christchurch – when I think about walking from here, where we are now at Toi Auaha, down to Tūranga in the Square, I see Ngāi Tahu narratives the whole way from lots of different Ngāi Tahu artists. These are funded by council or funded by independent organisations. They are fed into by a bunch of different partnerships. You don’t see that in Tāmaki. You don’t see that in Pōneke.
So, I think it’s really unfair and I think that the more that you tell a place it is something, the more it believes it. I really reject that notion that Christchurch is the most racist place because I have experienced racism everywhere.

What is the best piece of advice that has served you well?

Don’t date anyone in the industry!

That’s a good piece of advice! What do you think is the biggest misconception about your creative work?

The biggest lie about the arts, is that it is a part of a hierarchy, and it sits at the bottom of the hierarchy. 
The arts is just as important as governance. It’s just as important as justice. It’s as important as education. 
In fact, all of those things need art to exist. But the arts does not need those things to exist. The arts exists on its own because the only thing we know about ourselves is that we are eventually our own story. 
So, the danger is arts is relegated to the bottom of what’s important in society and so it receives very little funding. It receives very little positive media – even though the media itself is art – so that’s the biggest misconception about the work that we do.

Its perceived importance. 
And I guess that’s reinforced if you look at news on television – a whole quarter hour is devoted to sport. Imagine if that was arts and the stories that could be told…

We’re just really judgmental about the arts, but I know that in my own work, it has brought so many people together and has challenged people, but it challenges them in a safe space. 
Arts give you a safe space to talk about some of the darkest things in society. It’s a safe space for people to tell their own stories, which they may not even tell their own families. So, there’s a sense of holding and healing in that, but also, it’s intelligent. You have to be clever to be creative because you often are under resourced. It’s like how do I make this thing happen with five dollars? 
Or no dollars? You have to be clever.

Who are the Ōtautahi artists that you admire?

No, no, no, no, no no. No, that’s too hard. I mean, the list would be too long.  Take where we are right now – in the Toi Auaha house, the council arts hub – and just the people who are in this one space. You have Ngaio Cowell who is an amazing visual artist. 
You have Rachael King, who’s an amazing writer, you have Nic Low out there.  You have Ross Calman over here. You’ve got Laurie Patchett. You’ve got The Green Room.  Just in this space itself, any of those artists I could sit with and be super empowered by, and there’s everything from visual arts to music to writing.
You take me to the theatre, and I’ll give you another bunch of names. You take me to Tūranga and I’ll give you more names. Take me to Jolt Dance company – so many people who have been brilliant for our community.

What artwork or piece of music or book or performance has moved you. Is there one work that has taken your breath away?

Again, there are a lot and because I don’t judge work by its production values – because I know that it’s tied to resources -there are just so many. But there have been works over the years that remind me that I am a privileged artist. 
So, for example, I remember seeing some plays come out of Eritrea where the writers had been put in jail for writing the plays. The actors had been put in jail, and it reminded me that in some places around the world – art is a crime. So, I guess work that moves me is work that tells me something about my own privilege and keeps me grounded. Yeah, I’m really socially conscious.

I love that about you!

I tell you what though, something that really moved me recently was an exhibition with Maungarongo Ron Te Kawa. They said that when it comes to shitty negative narratives out in the world – they just hit back with sequins and glitter, I love that. I also love the Wharenui Harikoa – the crocheted marae – it’s so joyful and I really love that because we just need spaces with joy. 
Today more than ever.  Where is the joy? I don’t want to keep writing on trauma anymore.

There comes a point, doesn’t there, where you just have to go, ‘I want some joy!’

I just want some joy. 
It doesn’t mean I want to ignore what’s going on, but I want to feel all sides of my sensorial body. I want to feel joy and love, and rage and sadness and feel okay about that. The arts is like an outlet for that as well, right?

What do you think about the idea that the best writing comes out of trauma. 
I struggle with that, because I think, why should not happiness write boldly?

I just think that comes from a really binary notion of humanity.

Do you write when you’re happy?

Totally. I write about happiness but usually there’s an underlying rage or sadness, but these things move together, right? Like I think about tangi and how within the space of 20 minutes, you can have somebody come up and talk about this person and how they were not very nice to them, and then a group will get up and sing a waiata and you’re totally moved and then a nanny will get up and tell a joke and then some kids will get up and be so cute – and so all of those emotions exist in the same space. They are not separate to me. I don’t know how you can feel rage if you don’t know what joy is. I want more people to write about joy.

What about humour in art? Is that something that you consider important?

It’s really important. Laughter is the vehicle that moves the trauma through the water. Dave Fane who is an amazing actor and storyteller has asked a really important question about this which is: “What sits underneath brown laughter?”  and automatically your heart kind of squeezes because you know that it’s true and there is something heavy underneath the laughter. But laughter does get you through to the other side.

If you can laugh at painful stuff it does help, I find.

Again, those things don’t exist separately, right? There is so much evidence around the biology of stress and its impact on the body and laughter helps release that.  We need all of those emotions, all of those senses. And when I think about senses in te ao Māori  – the word for senses, apart from seeing, is rongo, and that goes back to the Atua – Rongo-marae-roa, Rongomātāne, who are the gods of peace but also the gods of kai – food.  So, you have all of these senses and to experience them will bring you a sense of peace but also just eating will do the same thing. 
So having a relationship with kai is really important, which means having a relationship with soil, and having a relationship with planting and seasons, so all the interconnected storytelling brings us a sense of really living in the world. I mean, I feel so lucky to have had the life that I have had. I’ve met the most amazing people and experienced the worst things that you could experience as well, but they don’t define who I am.

They don’t define your practice either.

No, and creativity has often been the vehicle that has moved me through some of those darkest movements.