Folded in Time

ABSTRACT

This essay explores whakapapa as both methodology and material within my practice, foregrounding Māori epistemologies that understand time, identity, and sovereignty as relational and continuous. Through a fictocritical approach that merges theory and lived experience, I examine how whenua, woollen blankets, muka, and taonga pūoro actively perform genealogy rather than simply reference it.

Central to this investigation is the research question: How might whakapapa be reimagined and materially performed through whenua — as both medium and kaupapa — within the context of cultural hybridity?

By engaging frameworks such as Burgess & Painting’s Onamata, Anamata, Rākete’s Papatūānukutanga, and Te Rito’s dual structure of whakapapa, the essay argues that materials carry memory, resistance, and futurity embedded within their fibres. Ultimately, this practice asserts the agency of whenua and the ongoing breath of whakapapa, demonstrating how hybrid forms can express both the political urgency of protest and the cyclical temporalities of tīpuna and mokopuna — shaping Māori futures rooted in land-based sovereignty.