Creative New Zealand, the country’s arts council, has announced Fiona Pardington as the representative artist for the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion at the 61st Venice Biennale. 

Born in 1961 in Auckland, Pardington is an award-winning photographer of Māori and Scottish descent. Her nearly five-decade-long practice revolves around the still-life genre, often highlighting taonga (treasured possessions) or objects held in institutional collections to probe themes of colonialism, cultural preservation, identity, and memory. Over the course of her career, Pardington has secured numerous accolades: aside from winning the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship (1996–97), she became the first New Zealand artist to be named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government in 2016. 

Paradington’s Venice project, titled “Taharaki Skyside,” will expand on her 2024 exhibition at Auckland-based gallery Starkwhite, ”Te taha o te rangi / The edge of the heavens.” The latter highlighted the endemic manu (bird) species of Aotearoa New Zealand, which are venerated within Māori culture and mythology, yet under threat of extinction amid the intensifying climate crisis. Pardington’s project specifically focuses on taxidermied avians held in various museums across the region and in Australia, immortalizing the distinctive plumage and form of each subject through meticulously staged ornithological “portraits.” Blurring the boundaries between life and death, ephemerality and permanence, her images further examine the entangled histories of ethnographic taxonomy, cultural erosion, and environmental destruction.

In a press release, Pardington stated: “Birds can symbolize familial love, romantic attachment, ecological warnings; they can be intimations of mortality, and in my work, they can also represent individual people in my life. The ideas I am conjuring remind us of the integral significance of manu within te ao Māori—as sources of food and materials, and intermediaries between human and divine worlds.” 

Chloe Cull and Felicity Milburn from Christchurch Art Gallery, who are co-curating the pavilion, remarked, “Pardington imbues her chosen subjects with an unshakable, transformative faith in their worth” and that her works “carry vital relevance in a global context.” They added, “Through Pardington’s lens, these stitched-together taxidermy relics emit unexpected charisma and emotional power. Hers is a careful, tender noticing that repairs and restores.”

Jointly presented by Creative New Zealand and Christchurch Art Gallery, the national pavilion is scheduled to open on May 9. 

Sanle Yan was an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.