Maureen Lander

Dr. Maureen Lander was born in 1942 in Rawene, New Zealand. She is a weaver, multimedia installation artist and academic of Ngāpuhi, Te Hikitu, Irish, Scottish and Yorkshire descent. Lander is a well-respected and significant Māori artist who since 1986 has exhibited, photographed, written and taught Māori art. She continues to produce and exhibit work as well as attend residencies and symposia both nationally and internationally.

Lander began learning weaving with noted Māori weaver Diggeress Te Kanawa in 1984 and spent many years researching fibre arts. In 2002 she was the first person of Māori descent to gain a Doctorate in Fine Arts at a New Zealand university.

Lander worked as a teacher before attending Elam School of Fine Arts. From 1986 she worked as a photographer for the University of Auckland’s Department of Anthropology. She taught Maori fibre arts over many years, mainly in the Māori Studies Department at the University of Auckland where she was a Senior Lecturer in Māori Material Culture. In 2007 she retired from university lecturing.

Lander was first introduced to muka (flax fibre) by Diggeress Te Kanawa and describes her three decades working with the material as a 'journey of discovery'. In a recent artist statement Lander said:

I was seduced by the beauty and magic of muka. My first public installation in 1986 – E kore koe e ngaro he kakano i ruia mai i Rangiatea in the Karanga, Karanga exhibition – featured whenu (warp threads) and aho (weft threads) that I had carefully prepared to make my first korowai. Instead, I suspended them in an ethereal cloud-like formation over a swirl of flax seed.

In 1998 art historian Priscilla Pitts wrote that Lander's combination of 'conventional university art school' study and training with traditional Māori weavers was reflected in her work:

Though much of her work is a response to weaving arts, Lander seldom actually weaves - at least, in the works she exhibits in gallery spaces. Rather, she uses, often to astonishing effect, the materials used in traditional Maori weaving and dying. These include pingao and feathers, but most of all harakeke (New Zealand flax) in all its forms - its leaves, its handsome flower and seed heads, the seeds and muka (the fine silky fibre obtained from the leaves). With these she combines materials from the Western world.

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