THEIR PLACE AROHA TAMIHANA
Aroha Tamihana’s kaupapa is making reo Māori part of everyday life. Fusing her skills as a graphic artist with her love for te reo and calligraphy, she creates wall art, greeting cards and household objects bearing proverbs, and sayings in reo as Maimoa Creative. Her whakapapa is Ngāti Raukawa and Ngāti Ranginui, she lives in Tauranga with her husband, Hamuera Tamihana and their two children Te Rauriki and Manahau, who are growing up bilingual.
I started my business about three and a half years ago, while I was on maternity leave
I wanted to do something that merged my passions I had not long before done a full immersion course in te reo Māori with my dad – that was probably the start of the whole ourney
I wanted to create products that normalise te reo Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand, and make it more accessible – little things such as gifting a greeting card or having a print on the wall – and merge that with my design capabilities and my love for brush lettering as well
I ve always been obsessed with writing and calligraphy It adds a really personal touch, because every piece is uni ue It s my handwriting as opposed to a font on the computer I find it really therapeutic
I feel like I can connect with the words a lot better through the act of writing them hat s what I hope people can feel when they hang them on the wall rom day one people were eager to get their hands on something that didn t really e ist at the time
I started learning te reo because I realised there was a big hole in my identity, but the big push
for me was starting a family. I was really adamant that our kids would grow up with the language even though I hadn’t. It was important for me to feel like I’m more connected to my Māoritanga, but more important for my kids to grow up with that.
We only speak te reo Māori to our kids. They speak English at day care, but we rarely hear them speak it at home. It’s a pretty incredible, fulfilling feeling as a parent seeing that dream becoming a reality.
There’s still a lot of work involved, and I’m still learning so a lot of words I’m constantly having to keep up with my kids’ comprehension but they’re going to grow up bilingual.
It’s pretty much effortless for them because they’re kids, and they just soak up whatever they’re surrounded by.
I invested in this studio about two years ago. I was originally working out of our spare room, but then we had kids I do pretty much everything in here.
We’re moving house soon, so I have to say goodbye to it. We’re just moving five minutes down the road, and it’s a bigger house, but not one where I can take the studio with me. o I’m slowly saying goodbye.
The new house has an office, but it’s half the size and nowhere near as nice, so I’m going to have to make do and compromise. I’m e cited that we’re moving to a bigger house, though, because our house here is uite small.
Having plants in the studio is a huge thing for me, they just make a space feel way more homely. I also like to have a selection of my products on the walls to remind myself, “you created this” and to be proud of it.
At the moment I’ve got the parāoa parai (frybread) tea towel up. I designed that during the last lockdown. Initially, I just shared the recipe on my Instagram page because I was making fry bread and I thought other people might want the recipe.
It e ploded from there. eople really loved it. It was a follower that suggested making it into a tea towel, and that [first printing] sold out within three days.
Feedback I got from followers, especially ones that have never made fried bread, was that it was so much more than just turning a recipe into a tea towel.
They said it empowered them to make something they thought, “only Nana would ever make”, or that they’d eat on the marae, but were too scared to make themselves.
I have a lot of books that I draw inspiration from. r Hinemoa Elder’s book ro a is really beautiful, also, Hona Black’s He Iti Te Kupu: Māori Meta po ra ii et hat has a lot of beautiful metaphors and sayings that also derived from whakataukī (proverbs), so I get a lot of inspiration from there.