Tāwhirimātea

Dancing in the storm

When the wind comes

You hear it before you see it: a low roar building in the hills, the trees beginning to thrash, the light turning strange and yellow. Then the storm arrives all at once. The rain comes sideways, lightning splits the sky into pieces, and the sea rises in great curling walls.

In the middle of it all, a figure rises.

Not cowering, not running, but dancing. One arm is flung high toward the churning sky, the other reaches out into the wind, and the body twists upward like smoke. Spirals pour across the figure’s skin as if the storm itself were written there. Lightning cracks around them. The waves rear up below. And still the figure rises, as wild and free as the weather.

There’s something exhilarating about it. Most of us run from storms. This artwork asks what it might feel like to be the storm instead.

The tradition of Tāwhirimātea

In Māori tradition, Tāwhirimātea is the atua of wind and storms. Basil Keane’s Te Ara account describes how, when the children of Ranginui and Papatūānuku planned to separate their parents, Tāwhirimātea was the only brother who did not agree. When the separation happened, he rose into the sky to be with his father. There he sent out his wind children to the four directions and released clouds of every kind.

In anger, he attacked his brothers. He broke the great trees of Tāne’s forests and raised Tangaroa’s waves as tall as mountains. Finally he turned on Tūmatauenga, who stood firm. Because neither brother could win, the account explains, Tāwhirimātea’s storms continue to this day.

Our artwork doesn’t claim to depict Tāwhirimātea himself. It is our own response to the wild, unconquerable energy of that tradition: the storm that never quite ends.

The artwork

A single figure dominates the centre of the coaster, rising diagonally from the lower left with one arm raised high above the head and the other stretched out to the side. The body is filled with spirals and swirling patterns. Around it, the sky churns in great rolling clouds, branching lightning cracks through the air, and at the bottom, waves curl and break into foam.

The whole composition spirals upward, drawing your eye from the waves at the bottom through the figure to the open sky above, where a lighter centre suggests a break in the clouds. The decorative spirals are our visual language of energy and motion; we do not assign them customary meaning.

In slate and in wood. On slate, the storm is dramatic in black, grey and stark white, with the lightning crackling bright against the dark stone. On wood, with rounded corners, the same storm glows in amber and gold, and the lightning reads like veins of fire across a warm sky.

Tribute

A tribute made with respect Our work is a contemporary artistic response to Māori storytelling and its deep connections with land, sea and ancestry. The visual interpretation offered here is Aroha Artisan’s. The traditions themselves belong to the communities who hold and pass them on, and the published accounts below offer a starting point for further learning.

Published accounts:

Basil Keane, “Tāwhirimātea – the weather”, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. https://teara.govt.nz/en/tawhirimatea-the-weather Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal, “Māori creation traditions”, Te Ara. https://teara.govt.nz/en/maori-creation-traditions