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Michael Parekōwhai Kapa Haka 2015 fibreglass and automotive paint, 12/15 640 x 170 x 170mm (widest points) PROVENANCE Private collection, Auckland. Michael Parekōwhai - Kapa Haka Essay by JEMMA FIELD Executed in 2003, Michael Parekōwhai's installation piece Kapa Haka was commissioned for the exhibition Paradise Now? Contemporary Art from the Pacific (2004) held at the Asia Society Museum in New York. The fifteen near-identical, life-sized, glossy fibreglass figures, posed as security guards, were originally positioned outside the museum as though guarding the precious treasures within. Measuring around six feet tall and solid in stature, each of the guards stood with legs apart and arms staunchly crossed, collectively packing a powerful punch. This work, Kapa Haka (2015), stands in a smaller stature and is part of another edition of fifteen, each with identical white security tags. The figure's head is slightly tilted up, and even at 640mm high and standing alone the work has a certain presence and strength of stature. In a similar manner to his earlier work Poorman, Beggarman, Thief (1999), which was modelled on Parekōwhai's father, the security guard that stars repeatedly in Kapa Haka is modelled on the artist's brother, Paratene, who is indeed a security guard. The use of repetition in Kapa Haka draws attention to issues of identity, since Parekōwhai's mannequins are afforded scant individuality. Apart from their identifying colour tags, in this instance white, they are lumped together in an undifferentiated mass: Parekōwhai thus makes a poignant comment on Aotearoa race relations and the tendency for Māori to be viewed as a non-specific entity. The various iterations of Kapa Haka are only differentiated by small features. By crafting a crowd of identical sameness, Parekōwhai invites the spectator to imagine the full spectrum of difference and individuality that quietly thrives under the pretence of an apparently indistinguishable exterior and, in the process, to register the difference between what people assume about Māori en masse and what Parekōwhai knows about his brother as an individual person. The title Kapa Haka refers to a specific and time-honoured Māori tradition that involves both song and dance, and works as a medium through which a unique cultural identity is expressed. In the context of Parekōwhai's work, this custom is ironically and playfully appropriated in a frozen performance piece. In Aotearoa, the larger fibreglass Kapa Haka figures were initially exhibited at Michael Lett on Karangahape Road, Auckland, where five of them stood motionless inside the front window and unabashedly guarded the empty gallery space. As art objects, the figures are instantly alluring with their lustrous, glossy finish and their curious sameness, which, in the same manner as identical twins, cannot fail to pique the viewer's curiosity and insist on close consideration. Parekōwhai's infinitely layered pieces that comprise Kapa Haka are successful in their multiplicity of meaning. Their heavy physical presence demands that the spectator reconsider inherited assumptions concerning racial stereotyping, while their brusque pose, blank expression and flawless polish allow them to be appreciated as aesthetic objects.