AUCKLAND.- Ana Iti (Te Rarawa) has won the Walters Prize 2024 for her formidable sculptural and sonic installation A resilient heart like the mānawa, 2024.

The announcement was made this evening by this year’s esteemed international judge, Professor Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, during a celebration at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Ana Iti receives a cash prize of $50,000 for the honour of Aotearoa New Zealand’s national contemporary art prize.

Professor Ndikung, who serves as the director and chief curator of Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, says: “Ana Iti’s work A resilient heart like the mānawa has been singled out because of the radicality of its manifestation. Stripped to the bare minimum, the work shares something in common with great poetry: the ability of accessing multiple universes through the availability of a few words.

He continues, “The concreteness of metals of the de-concretised wharf infrastructure that stand majestically in the gallery express the weight of histories of industry, of extractivism, of capitalism, of the colonial enterprise and of connections in Rāwene that was transformed into a timber town with a mill and shipyards in the early 1800s. While in a very delicate balancing act, the kauri timber floats almost unhinged over the heads of the visitors."

“In [the work] was the idea of drawing in space. The feet of each of the metal structures, just like the bodies thereof, and the floating wood seemed like abstract drawings in space. Constellations. Compositions."

“The notion of the mānawa that encapsulates several meanings — the heart and the mangrove, thus the title of the work could be understood as A Resilient Heart Like the Heart or the A Resilient Heart Like the Mangrove seemed to further ground the poetics of the work."

“Their ability to protect shorelines from erosion over time to me seems like an anecdote of resilience and resistance — emotionally, spiritually, politically, economically and otherwise. The work excels in its compactness and abbreviations without being reductive, or indeed it gets rid of everything redundant to give space for a larger truth to exist, and to find form.”

The winner of the Walters Prize 2024

Ana Iti, A resilient heart like the mānawa, 2024

Ana Iti (born 1989, Waiharakeke Blenheim, Te Rarawa) currently lives and works in Te Matau-a-Māui Hawkes Bay.

Iti was nominated for recent video and sculptural installations including The woman whose back was a whetstone, exhibited in Swallowing Geography at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (2021-22) and I must shroud myself in stinging nettle exhibited at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi (2022-23).

Professor Ndikung chose the winner from a shortlist of artists nominated by an independent jury: Juliet Carpenter, Owen Connors, Brett Graham, and Ana Iti, all of whom are currently exhibited at Auckland Art Gallery as part of The Walters Prize 2024 exhibition.

Professor Ndikung says he was honoured to have the chance to experience the works of “four absolutely brilliant artists of different disciplines and practices, different generations, different sociocultural and historical affiliations, but at the same time excelling similarly in the depth and breadth of their arts. This has been a true blessing.”

Ana Iti joins a distinguished group of past Walters Prize winners including, Mataaho Collective and Maureen Lander (2021), Ruth Buchanan (2018), Shannon Te Ao (2016), Luke Willis Thompson (2014), Kate Newby (2012), Dan Arps (2010), Peter Robinson (2008), Francis Upritchard (2006), et al. (2004) and Yvonne Todd (2002).

Established in 2002, the Walters Prize serves as a vital platform for showcasing excellence in the visual arts. Now held triennially, this award recognizes outstanding works of contemporary New Zealand art produced and exhibited over the past two years. The Walters Prize aims to elevate contemporary art as a significant and debated aspect of cultural life, honouring the legacy of the late New Zealand artist Gordon Walters.