Breathe | Mauri Ora, an immersive digital exhibition by Marshmallow Laser Feast at Te Papa Tongarewa. Photo / Rosalie Liddle Crawford
On its 40th anniversary, Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts is set to be a bold, multi-disciplinary celebration of creativity, remembrance, and advocacy in Wellington, writes Rosalie Liddle Crawford.
A full arena fell silent before the first note had settled.
When Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds performed at Wellington’s TSB Arena on February 5, it felt like a shared act of presence.
Dressed in preacher-black, Cave commanded attention with weathered grace. New material sat alongside long-held songs steeped in grief and longing. It was an immersive journey through sorrow, joy, reflection, and intensity—anchored by one of rock’s most compelling figures.
In many ways, it was the perfect opening gesture for the 40th year of the Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts, in Wellington.
Though the festival officially opens on February 24, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ February 5 and 6 Wellington concerts were adopted into the programme as a special 40th anniversary opening event.
For co-directors Dolina Wehipeihana and Tama Waipara MNZM, the 40th anniversary is anchored in Maumaharatanga – remembrance - but not in looking backwards for comfort.
“We weren’t interested in nostalgia,” Wehipeihana said, “but in acknowledging the foundations that got us here — and asking what that means now.”
“The festival is part of an intergenerational chain,” Waipara said.
“We’re here because of the people who built platforms before us. Our job is to honour that and extend it.”
This ethos extends beyond the festival into their wider work.
Wehipeihana manages multiple roles — co-director, Kaiārahi Māori at Performing Arts Network NZ, and chair of the Atamira Dance Collective Charitable Trust — combining advocacy, mentoring, and strategic support for Māori artists.
An award-winning musician, Waipara brings decades of experience as a composer, performer, and curator, alongside leadership roles including founding the Te Tairāwhiti Arts Festival and serving on boards from Te Papa to SOUNZ and iwi trusts.
“Many of us sit in spaces of advocacy, particularly for independent artists who aren’t part of large organisations, to put their brilliant work up so we can all see it, share it, and support it,” he said.
That ethos is embodied in the return of Waiora Te Ūkaipō – The Homeland by Hone Kouka. First staged in 1996 — commissioned by the festival — it toured nationally and internationally for five years.
Now, 30 years after its premiere, Waiora returns to Wellington—directed by Kouka, who was struck by how much the play still resonates.
“It’s not a retrospective,” Waipara said. “It’s a living work. It shaped who we are — and it’s still shaping who we’re becoming.”
The revival carries generational resonance: the late Nancy Brunning starred as Rongo in the original; her daughter Mā returns as sound designer and will also perform in her own festival show at Tāwhiri Warehouse on February 28.
“That’s the continuum,” Wehipeihana said. “That’s maumaharatanga in action.”
Rather than impose a rigid theme, the directors began by listening.
“We inherited a landscape rather than a locked programme,” Wehipeihana said. “So, we asked — what’s already in motion? What conversations are artists having?”
With excellence a given, the focus became connection, collaboration, and sustainability.
Both directors speak about supporting artists beyond the festival stage: mentoring, advisory work, and building audiences.
“It’s about a balance of listening, being active and aware, and using whatever platform we have to create opportunities for connection between audiences and artists,” Waipara said.
Restaging works like the iconic Gloria and supporting digital dance and film projects exemplifies this vision.
The festival also amplifies traditionally under-represented voices, such as the newly commissioned Music Portrait of a Humble Disabled Samoan, which portrays lived experience as a tetraplegic with humour, power, and political relevance.
“‘Nothing about us without us’ is at the heart of it,” Waipara said.
Movement and storytelling remain central in dance theatre work, Mythosoma.
“Mythosoma explores injury, trauma, or shock and how we carry things in the body… the arts can help heal, told through dance and storytelling,” Waipara said.
The festival’s approach to innovation is intentionally multi-disciplinary.
“We think about arts practice as a continuum… traditional forms evolving into contemporary practice,” Wehipeihana said.
“Kapa haka meets symphony and pop music, film meets theatre — it’s all multi-disciplinary by default in Aotearoa.”
Contemporary circus company Gravity & Other Myths makes its Wellington debut with Ten Thousand Hours, a whānau-friendly acrobatic spectacular, while platinum-selling Rob Ruha performs with the NZ Symphony Orchestra at the Michael Fowler Centre.
Curator Sophie Thorn describes Whai Wāhi at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery as part of an ongoing national dialogue about belonging, land, and identity.
Suspended near Ian Athfield’s stairwell, the Te Waka Hourua panels play a central role. Originally from Museum of NZ Te Papa Tongarewa, they have been reinterpreted by the Te Waka Hourua collective to spark dialogue about colonial history, sovereignty, and Māori cultural authority.
The panels invite viewers to reflect on how history is presented, whose voices are heard, and the ongoing impact of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Reframing protest as ‘continuation’ rather than rupture, the artists present recurring motifs—Bastion Point, legislative language, maternal imagery—as questions to the viewer about where they stand within histories still unfolding.
This message aligns with the wider festival: remembrance is not retrospective. It is relational.
Meanwhile in Porirua, Pātaka Art + Museum is hosting exhibitions honouring sculptor and carver Fred Graham alongside Mutumutu Ki Mukukai: Freshwater to Saltwater, highlighting Ngati Toa’s enduring relationship with Porirua, and Tīpurepure Au Va’ine’s active tīvaivai-making space.
“It’s not just about displaying quilts,” lead curator Ioana Gordon-Smith said. “It’s about the relationships and knowledge-sharing that happen around them.”
Art isn’t the only thing on show. The writers’ programme functions as a “festival within a festival,” based at the Tāwhiri Warehouse.
Across theatres, galleries, and harbour edges, the 40th anniversary reveals itself not as showy performances, but as a living network of memory, collaboration, advocacy, and creative courage.
It does not shout but it listens. It remembers. It builds the platform for whoever comes next.
Details
The Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts runs in Wellington from February 24 to March 15.
Find more information and purchase tickets at festival.nz
NZ Herald Travel visited courtesy of WellingtonNZ.