Ana Iti (Te Rarawa, Ngāi Tūpoto, Ngāti Here, Pākehā)

Ana Iti’s practice is shaped by an ongoing exploration of distance, memory and connection. In 2024 Iti was the recipient of New Zealand’s premier art award, The Walters Prize, and in 2025 she won the prestigious Harriet Friedlander Residency. Working across sculpture, drawing and installation, she approaches land and architecture as living repositories of story. Reaching Across a Great Distance was commissioned by Coupland Cormack for Precinct Properties for the foyer of the new home of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade at 55 Molesworth Street in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Situated within this significant civic space, the work establishes a dialogue between architectural form and contemporary experience.

As Iti explains, “Distance and desire for connection are driving forces within my artistic practice.” The form of the sculpture began with tracing her finger into condensation on bedroom windows, making intimate, improvised gestures on a surface that hovers between presence and disappearance. The window operates as a threshold between inside and outside, separation and connection. Drawing on glass becomes an attempt to navigate that separation and to consider its potential. In this commission, those ephemeral tracings are scaled up and translated into a large-scale sculptural drawing in hand-finished steel. Breath and touch are transformed into something materially enduring.

Formally, the work is composed of fragmented, undulating lines stacked upon one another like a series of ripples. These improvised strokes suggest movement, a gust of wind, the earth’s strata or a network of tributaries. The composition is minimal and elemental, yet charged with force. Scaled into steel, the gestures stabilise without losing their energy. The striated forms resonate with the tectonic and atmospheric conditions of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, recalling both geological uplift and invisible currents moving across the harbour. The sculpture introduces a sense of organic animation into the architectural clarity of the foyer. 

For the commission, Iti also reflected on the local pūrākau of Whātaitai and Ngake through the lens of longing and pursuit. In this creation story of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, the taniwha Whātaitai attempts to follow his brother to the open sea but becomes stranded, later lifted by earthquake and transformed, his body forming the land of Hataitai. “Though Whātaitai’s desire to follow and be with Ngake may appear to be a failure,” Iti reflects, “the reverberations of his pursuit ultimately resulted in the formation of something meaningful and new.” Her rippling steel lines register both effort and aftermath, suggesting the echo of movement that reshapes land and meaning over time.

The work also references the whakataukī associated with He Auripo, “The Rippling,” articulated by Te Āti Awa Taranaki Whānui. The proverb reminds us that when water moves there is life; when it becomes still vitality diminishes. Rippling signals activity beneath the surface and the responsibility of kaitiakitanga to sustain life within land and community. Iti’s layered lines embody this principle, suggesting currents in motion and the reciprocity between land, people and history.

Reaching Across a Great Distance remains open, inviting multiple readings as geological diagram, atmospheric drawing, cartographic trace or emotional gesture. By abstracting an intimate mark into enduring material, the work honours the stories embedded within this site while allowing new interpretations to ripple forward. It is both restrained and deeply responsive, acknowledging the living forces that continue to shape Te Whanganui-a-Tara and the communities who gather within it. 

Selected photography: Jason Mann Photography. Images courtesy of the artist.