09/06/2025
We caught up with Chapter Three artists, who will be occupying Enjoy's space for studio time 2—28 Pipiri June before opening an exhibition in Hōngongoi July. Here, Aroha Matchitt-Millar discusses her practice of working with jewellery, blankets, beads, birds, and taonga.
"I am a maker of jewellery, blankets, beads, birds, and taonga. I enjoy adorning myself and the world around me with the stories of my tīpuna.
At the moment I’m working on a series of manu pōria that measure and capture my body. Manu Pōria are small devices that were used in the practice of domesticating birds pre-colonial contact. These devices were like bracelets squeezed onto the ankles of young birds that were often taught to recite whakapapa and karakia, or used as domesticated decoys to lure in other manu."
Read the full interview on our website:
https://enjoy.org.nz/blog/2025/06/aroha-millar
Aroha Matchitt-Millar (Ngāti Rangitihi, Te Whakatōhea, Tūhoe) is a multidisciplinary artist with strong foundations in contemporary jewellery and raranga. Her work is influenced by the practices her tīpuna used, intrinsically passed down through whakapapa.
Using feathers, feet, wings, and bones, Aroha creates contemporary jewellery, influenced by urban Māori 'Hori Chic' style. The intimacy of the process of skinning and pelting manu is both cathartic and repairing, recognising the role colonisation had in separating Māori from these taonga while whatu-ing the strands of whakapapa back together. Her mahi is a rats tail reclamation to climb te ara a Whaititiri and have a cuppa with her nan.
Image courtesy of James Dobson.
