Nan Goldin
Most famously working through themes of love, gender, domesticity, and sexuality, Goldin used her personal experiences to visualise the political nature of these subjects, especially when subjugated by social taboos and expectations.
Category Archives: Activism
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Niniwa-i-te-rangi
From the late 1890s Niniwa-i-te-rangi carved out a unique position for herself. She was considered a leader of Māori affairs and was the only woman whose views were sought when the Native Affairs Committee inquired into the Native Lands Settlement and Administration Bill of 1898. She regularly spoke on the marae in a district in which this was not a common practice. She became known around the country, beginning in the days when Tamahau sent her out as Pāpāwai’s ambassador to solicit attendance at the Māori parliaments. Her knowledge of whakapapa and tradition was extensive and contributed to the work of the Tāne-nui-a-rangi committee.
Pussy Riot
Even more than the individual artists that may have been influenced by their aesthetic or political intentions, the most enduring legacy of Pussy Riot has been the new global interest in Russian activist art, as well as in the political situation within the county.
Tini Kerei Taiaroa
Ngāi Tahu; founding mother, community worker
Stella May Henderson
It was ‘while working at Jurisprudence and Constitutional History’, she said, ‘that the idea first occurred to me of taking a law degree.…I did not know then that the profession was not open to women.’ In the 1890s Stella Henderson began to study law.
Pérrine Moncrieff
In 1925 Pérrine wrote New Zealand birds and how to identify them. Although she intended her book for the untrained bird-lover, it influenced scientists as well as lay people and ran to five editions.
Niki De Saint Phalle
The Nouveau Realisme movement, and Niki de Saint Phalle’s work in particular, had a significant effect on the development of conceptual art. Her works often combined performance and plastic art in new ways, blending and dismantling hierarchies between painting, sculpture, and performance in a way that would influence conceptual artists.
Iriaka Matiu Rātana
New Zealand politician Iriaka Rātana was to serve in the House for 20 years. She was an unusual politician in her early years, unsophisticated yet eloquent, gentle and invariably polite.
Kate Wyllie
Kate Wyllie is remembered as a woman who sought to defend her rights and those of her people.
Thyra Talvase Bethell
During the First World War her strong personality and status as the chairman’s wife enabled her to establish a new kind of women’s leadership. Women’s voluntary work was in demand, and largely by use of the recently installed telephone system she organised Red Cross nursing at Hanmer Springs and supervised emergency measures in the influenza epidemic of November 1918. She was appointed an MBE in 1919. The Red Cross remained a lifelong interest: Thyra headed the Culverden sub-centre for over 50 years and was involved in the local and national organisation during the Second World War. She was made a councillor of honour of the New Zealand Red Cross Society in 1957.