The Dream of the Haere-pō is a study on time and on our indigenous transformation. It is an instrument for parabolic storytelling and a visual manifesto that depicts in five tableaux, five tāpa’o (signs, markers) that I consider to be aide-mémoires (memory-helpers). With this mural at MoCNA, part of the EXPOSURE exhibition, I hope to converse with viewers, and inspire them to question the indigenous and the contemporary labels as places of enclosure and invite them to imagine futures through our respective ancestral tāpa’o.
The Dream of the Haere-pō narrates the human impetus of manifesting and creating signs for others to see. It reclaims the act of art-making with one’s body and imbues it with rituals and meaning, at once signifier and signified. It asks how does one represent the unrepresentable?
Alexander LEE
The Dream of the Haere-pō
2021
Acrylic on wall
Installed at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM