Lily Nijssen - Year 11 Contemporary Art

Mural Materials - acrylic paint, plywood, outdoor paint markers

In creating this mural I took inspiration from the Haast's eagle known by the Māori population as hokioi or pouakai and its relationship with the moa, the ancestor of our national bird the kiwi. Specifically, depicting how the extinction of the moa due to the arrival of man in Aotearoa led to the extinction of the Haast's eagle. 

Further, the theme of connection and dependence of all things on each other, represented in this part of our history in the way the largest eagle relied on the survival of the moa as their main food source to survive themselves, and as the moa died so did they. I used the circular orientation of elements in my mural to show the fluidity of living things and how all are needed to complete the cycle, using the heads of both moa and Haast eagle covered in pattern, in particular repeating koru, to show life and rebirth/death. 

The half-and-half feathers show how the survival of the moa and the great eagle were one and the same. The waka represents the arrival of man travelling into the future leaving the moa and Haast eagle to the past.