Ana Iti awarded the 2024 Walters Prize

Ana Iti (Te Rarawa) has won Aotearoa New Zealand’s foremost contemporary art prize, the Walters Prize 2024 for her formidable sculptural and sonic installation A resilient heart like the mānawa, 2024.

The announcement was made on September 27, 2024 by this year’s judge, Professor Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, during a celebration at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. 

Ana Iti (born 1989, Waiharakeke Blenheim, Te Rarawa) currently lives and works in Te Matau-a-Māui Hawkes Bay, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Professor Ndikung, director and chief curator of Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, says: “Ana Iti’s work A resilient heart like the mānawa was singled out because of the radicality of its manifestation. Stripped to the bare minimum, the work shares something in common with great poetry: the ability of accessing multiple universes through the availability of a few words.”

He continues, “The concreteness of metals of the de-concretised wharf infrastructure that stand majestically in the gallery express the weight of histories of industry, of extractivism, of capitalism, of the colonial enterprise and of connections in Rāwene that was transformed into a timber town with a mill and shipyards in the early 1800s. While in a very delicate balancing act, the Kauri timber floats almost unhinged over the heads of the visitors.” 

“The notion of the mānawa (or manawa) that encapsulates several meanings—the heart and the mangrove— thus the title of the work could be understood as A Resilient Heart Like the Heart or A Resilient Heart Like the Mangrove seemed to further ground the poetics of the work.”

“Their ability to protect shorelines from erosion over time to me seems like an anecdote of resilience and resistance—emotionally, spiritually, politically, economically and otherwise. The work excels in its compactness and abbreviations without being reductive; indeed it gets rid of everything redundant to give space for a larger truth to exist and to find form.”

Iti was nominated for recent video and sculptural installations including The woman whose back was a whetstone at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (2021–22) and I must shroud myself in stinging nettle at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi (2022–23).

Professor Ndikung chose the winner from a shortlist of artists nominated by an independent jury: Juliet Carpenter, Owen Connors, Brett Graham, and Ana Iti, all of whom are currently exhibited at Auckland Art Gallery as part of The Walters Prize 2024 exhibition.

Professor Ndikung says he was honoured to have the chance to experience the works of “four absolutely brilliant artists of different disciplines and practices, different generations, different sociocultural and historical affiliations, but at the same time excelling similarly in the depth and breadth of their arts. This has been a true blessing.”

Ana Iti received a cash prize of 50,000 NZD for the honour of New Zealand’s national contemporary art prize.

Ana Iti joins a distinguished group of past Walters Prize winners, including Mataaho Collective and Maureen Lander (2021), Ruth Buchanan (2018), Shannon Te Ao (2016), Luke Willis Thompson (2014), Kate Newby (2012), Dan Arps (2010), Peter Robinson (2008), Francis Upritchard (2006), et al. (2004) and Yvonne Todd (2002).

Established in 2002, the Walters Prize serves as a vital platform for showcasing excellence in the visual arts. Over the past 22 years, the Waters Prize has recognised outstanding works of New Zealand contemporary art produced and exhibited both in New Zealand and internationally. The Walters Prize aims to elevate contemporary art as a significant and debated aspect of cultural life, honouring the legacy of the late New Zealand artist Gordon Walters. Former international judges include Kate Fowle (2021), Adriano Pedrosa (2018), Doryun Chong (2016), Charles Esche (2014, Mami Takaoka (2012), Vicente Todolí (2010), Catherine David (2008), Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (2006), Robert Storr (2004), Harald Szeemann (2002).

The Walters Prize is made possible thanks to its founding benefactors and principal donors, Erika and Robin Congreve, and Dame Jenny Gibbs. Major donors include Dayle Mace, and Chris and Charlotte Swasbrook.