Ario Rewi
Bio
Kia ora, I’m Ario Rewi (Te Whānau a Takimoana, Ngāti Porou), a writer, storyteller, and creative.
My work weaves together poetry, advocacy, and whakapapa often speaking from the voice of the whenua, waters, or inner child.
I create to heal, to remember, and to remind others that we belong to ourselves, to each other, and to the stories that shape us.
Description
Seaglass
Medium: Watercolor
This work is inspired by walking the shoreline after a storm, when the beach is scattered with debris and discovering, among the refuse, pieces of sea glass.
Sea glass carries its own duality: born of careless human practice, yet through the relentless tumbling of tide and time, it becomes softened, luminous, beautiful, and treasured.
Seaglass asks viewers to reflect on this likeness in the context of turbulent experiences such as a cyclone.
Just as broken glass is reshaped into treasure, so too do we find, in the wake of disaster, fragments of goodness that endure: the resilience of spirit, the generosity of strangers, the kindness of neighbors, and the unshakable thread of community.
These glimmers remind us that even within loss and upheaval, beauty can still be found.
Follow - @ario_rewi
Contact - arewi@doc.govt.nz
Link to research
My pieces connect deeply to the themes explored in Kua huri te tai, kua pari te tai aroha, particularly the shifting tides of grief, memory, and restoration. It reflects the lived experience of whenua and whānau who have endured loss whether through natural disaster or long-term environmental degradation and who now stand in the current of change, yearning for reconnection and renewal.
Through the voice of a river or a kuia, I explore what it means to be seen as burdensome or broken by the very people who once drew life from you, mirroring kōrero shared by our community around how colonisation and climate change have distorted our relationships with each other and the environment.
There’s a grief in that loss, but also a deep aroha in the resilience to keep nurturing, keep holding, and keep hoping.
In that sense, these pieces sit within the tide turning a gentle but deliberate reclaiming of our stories, our truths, and our responsibilities to each other and the taiao.
As the report affirms:
“Our people carry loss, but they also carry determination to heal and restore — for the whenua, the awa, and for those yet to come.”
In this sense, Arios’ works sit within the tide turning — a gentle but deliberate reclaiming of stories, truths, and responsibilities to each other and the taiao.
