Paora Toiterangiuiai
Paora Toi Te Rangiuaia (Ngāti Porou) was born on the East Coast of Aotearoa/New Zealand. He first trained as a jeweller and silversmith, but his practice now includes larger-scale sculpture in bronze, aluminium, granite, marble, basalt, limestone, wood, and glass.
His work is guided by Māori symbolic traditions. Through tātai toi, he uses ancestral motifs, such as tohu, kowhaiwhai, and moko, to bring a Māori perspective to themes of environment, identity, history, and whakapapa.
In his larger sculptural works, these ideas unfold with even greater breadth, weaving together cosmology, history, and collective memory. Rather than repeating traditional forms, his art offers a contemporary, evolving expression grounded in whakapapa and identity, often carrying strong cultural and environmental meaning.