Story: Media art

'Mahuika' (2001) is one of the mythological images in Lisa Reihana’s ambitious photographic and video project 'Digital marae'. The imposing figure represents the goddess of fire. Reihana uses digital media to create portable symbols of ancestral figures, which were historically found as carvings on a marae but have become distant to generations of urbanised Māori. Working digitally allows Reihana to renegotiate protocols from some regions where carving is only done by men. She has been at the forefront of film and media art in New Zealand.