Parade
Patricia Grace, 1975
Parade is a story about a Maori woman’s struggle to make sense of her race and identity, attempting to rearrange her own reality and memory. I used strands of dark hair as a symbol of identity, ethnicity, and a marker of time. The graphic quality of the hair creates an image suggestive of vertical bars, referencing Matewai's comparison of her people to “animals in cages to be stared at.” When viewed horizontally the hair transforms into a landscape, embodying the Maori’s description of themselves as tangata whenua or ‘people of the land.’ Letterforms are interwoven with the image, relying on positive and negative areas for legibility, echoing the way Matewai internalizes strength from her surrounding environment and community.
