Victoria (ia/she/they) is a first-generation Australian-born Maori. Born on Yugambeh Country in Queensland, currently living on unceded Bidjigal Country on the shoreline of Maroubra in Warrang, known by the settler name as Sydney, Australia. Her ancestral affiliations are Ngati Ohomairangi, Te Arawa, Rongowhaakata, Kahungunu, Irish, English, Finnish.
She traverses the visual and performing arts as a dancer, choreographer, director, mentor, photographer and filmmaker.
Her work stems from indigenous epistemologies within diasporic concepts of identity formation and belonging. Her work is liminal, inter-cultural, inter-disciplinary and reinstates the power of Indigenous creativity within the politics of Rematriation – inserting the body into frameworks of power, for future ancestors, in a reciprocal imagining. Central to this is Whakapapa (kinship/genealogies), Mana Atua Wahine (feminine principal/tapu/energy), Body Weather and IndigiQueer revitalization within creation practices. Her work is a gradual binding of intimate collaboration between artists, elders and communities.
She was a member of De Quincey Co., Australia’s leading Body Weather dance company based in Sydney. Victoria has been awarded a Rex Cramphorn Theatre Fellowship and is one of six artists featured in the 1st edition of BAC, Madrid - Biennale of the Arts of the Body, Image and Movement.
She works with a core team of highly skilled artists and their award-winning works, Copper Promises: Hinemihi Haka and Tangi Wai…the cry of water has toured nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. Her short film TAKE has been screened across six continents.
Experimental Micro-Fellowship 2021
Victoria’s Micro Fellowship sees the artist probe into creative research stemming from indigenous epistemologies within diasporic concepts of identity formation and belonging. This research turns towards Polynesian forebears and Maori celestial realms/cosmology, calling backwards into the future in a reciprocal imagining. Victoria will draw in a range of collaborators – including Moe Clark and their collective Weather Beings, as well as James Brown and Boris Bagattini to explore the artistic possibilities from this creative immersion.
LiveWorks x Bundanon Trust Resident 2019
Performance Space Experimental Choreographic Residency 2016
Tangi Wai…the cry of water
Performance Space, Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art, 2015
DAY OF INVIGILATION, durational performance, “You’re History!” 30 Ways in Time and Space
Performance Space, 2012