Sienna O'Shannessey has entered her artwork in the Kiingi Tuheitia Portrait Award, a competition at the Te Pūkenga Whakaata - NZ Portrait Gallery that encourages Māori artists to create portraits of their tūpuna (ancestors). This exhibition honours Kiingi Tuheitia.

"I descend from Maud Emma Norton who is seen in the top left of my image, photographed in Kaikoura, a place where earlier generations of my whanau have lived and are buried.

In this picture are my precious tupuna and the woman my Māori blood line come from. My grandmother Susanne, who I am very close to shares stories from our past. We spend lots of whānau time together in Kaikoura. I surf below our marae that looks out over the waves of Mangamanu. My artwork shows my strong connection and sense of belonging to this place, which I’ve always felt. The photographic images sit transparently over a drypoint etching of lush native plants from my ancestral home, the land and people woven together.