Lisa Reihana has worked for over four decades as an artist, producer and cultural interlocutor across film, costume, text and photography. A key proponent in the development of Maori art since the 1990s, Reihana’s cinematic language counters the bias of recorded histories to re-centre non-western cultural identity, redefining how histories of colonisation are represented and remembered.
Reihana has exhibited widely both in museums and biennales around the world and is found in important private and museum collections in New Zealand and internationally, including Brooklyn Museum (USA), Plug In ICA (Canada), Royal Academy (UK), Quai Branly Museum (France), Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea (Italy), Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (New Zealand), and QAGOMA (Australia).
In 2017, Reihana represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale with her large-scale video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] (2015-17), a seminal work in Aotearoa New Zealand's art history canon, which has since been shown around the world and garnered widespread critical acclaim.
Reihana’s ambitious video work, GROUNDLOOP (2022), was commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for the launch of the much-anticipated Sydney Modern. More recently, Reihana unveiled DigiRadiance: GOLD_LEAD_WOOD_COAL (2024), commissioned by Tai Kwun in Hong Kong, and Māramatanga, a six-metre-tall video installation and the first major digital work to be commissioned by the University of Auckland Art Collection.
In 2014, Reihana was awarded an Arts Laureate Award by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. She was subsequently awarded the Te Tohu Toi Ke Te Waka Toi Maori Arts Innovation Award from Creative New Zealand in 2015, and in 2018 was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
Other notable solo exhibitions include Extracts, Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney (2023), Nomads of the Sea, Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney (2020), Mai i te aroha, ko te aroha, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand (2008); Lisa Reihana: Digital Marae, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand (2007); and Native Portraits n.19897, Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, Rome, Italy (2007).
Her work has featured in important exhibitions nationally and internationally including Bangkok Art Biennale (2024), Tai Kwun, Hong Kong (2024), National Gallery Singapore (2024); Te Wheke-a-Muturangi: The Adversary, Sydney Festival (2023); NIRIN, 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020); Oceania, Royal Academy, London (2018); Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists, Te Papa Tongarewa: Wellington, NZ (2018); Tai Whetuki – House of Death Redux, The Walters Prize (2016), Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2016); Suspended Histories, Museum Van Loon, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2013); Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, Canada (2011); Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2007); and Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific, Asia Society Museum, New York (2004).
