Ahi Nyx’s office, her living room floor, is where she will sit for hours, working her hands through strips of harakeke in practised mechanical movements. Her two whiskered colleagues, Kōwhiri and Tamatea, orbit around her workspace, inspecting the whenu (strands), each one cleaned, sized to the millimetre and softened over the blade of a butter knife.
The artist, who hails from Te Āti Awa and Ngāti Raukawa, is a kairaranga (weaver) and a provider of raranga wānanga (weaving workshops) through Ahi Raranga. She created an opening piece for the Campbell Luke’s show at last year’s NZ Fashion Week Kahuria: a bralette woven from muka, the cream-coloured fibre extracted from harakeke.
That ambitious project took 250 hours and, with no examples of woven bras, was constructed out of pure creativity. Recently featured in Vogue Australia, Ahi wants to continue spreading the beauty of raranga to the world.
I’m sitting on the same living room floor, effortfully trying to extract muka with the same grace and ease that Ahi has. From a strand of harakeke, she cleanly strips uniform bands of the white fibre, and I watch their ends curl as they fall to the floor.
Ahi’s connection to her ancestral mātauranga only sparked relatively recently. Only over the last few decades she’s been learning to be proud of being Māori, or as she describes it, “finding true honour and respecting ourselves.”
During the 2020 lockdowns, Ahi had lost her whāngai mother, and like many artists at the time, was jobless. “I had this calling inside that was like, ‘go for a walk’.” So Ahi took off and came back home with the harakeke that would become her first creation.
“That’s called a hīnaki,” her auntie said, after Ahi had shared a picture on social media. Ahi realised she had made a thing that had a name. As a child she always felt connected to nature, going down to the river to find crabs and making them little homes. “I must have connected somewhere to an ancient knowledge – an ancient connection that was far beyond my knowing.”
So she continued weaving and joined an online course with the Hetet Māori School of Art which taught her all of her foundational skills. Kaiako after kaiako, wānanga after wānanga Ahi’s practice reignited the embers that burned within her for generations. In 2021, she came out, reclaimed her name, Ahi, and began seeking communities that were also on a mission to decolonise and indigenise everyday practices.
Through weaving, Ahi has been healing the wounds left behind by disengaged first parents and the sudden loss of her whāngai mother. Weaving reveals a whole universe of metaphor. The practice opens conversation among weavers, and if alone, with ourselves and those before us. Then as we weave, we mend.
Over a few hours, my muka has been rolled and twisted into a bumpy length of rope and we’ve talked about generational trauma, bad parenting, internalised racism, spiders, exes, and exchanged our best poo stories. Then Ahi puts me to work to finish a small two-corner kōnae.
Ahi’s proudest creation is an unassuming kete that looks exactly like her koro’s when he made it. “I felt like I felt him. It looks like what he did and I just felt so enough.” Both of Ahi’s koro were weavers which made her feel brave enough to start. “If they did it and they were men, when weaving was considered women’s work, I can come back as a queer woman and do the same thing.”
“I felt really bad because I don’t have my reo… but my hands are fluent. My hands can speak weaving to all cultures,” Ahi says, regardless of language, age, colour, or gender. “Every single culture in history throughout time, with a few exceptions if you live in frozen spaces, have done that work. So it’s our right to use our hands, to make cloth, to make tools, to make carry cases and to just experience nature. It’s our birthright… [to] live alongside earth instead of trying to conquer her.”
Given the tapu nature of mahi raranga, I wonder if its wairua is ever lost when she does it for a job. Ahi says there are times that weaving can feel painful and bring about sadness. “I need to honour myself and honour the art and honour everyone that sits before me to make it,” she says. “As long as I feel like it’s a gift, I’m honouring it. And if I ever don’t, then I’ll stop.”
Ahi says her dream is “creating spaces where people feel enough in themselves and loving ourselves.” She proudly recollects a memory of teaching at a high school and letting a young man take a craft knife outside and harvest on his own. “I heard them say, ‘I feel so Māori right now. This is what I need.’”
I attended one of Ahi’s wānanga this year and left empowerment in self-reliance: that if I needed something, I should try to make it myself first. Harakeke can be strong, structured and waterproof, but prepared another way, it can be soft, pliable and fibrous. After that wānanga, that resource was everywhere. I just hadn’t noticed it before. I restrung my taonga, and wove mats and kete.
Ahi’s creations are mostly designed for practical use and some for higher art. “I definitely want to encourage it not being such a high form of art. My work is to touch it, not be afraid of it and go make it.” To her, weaving should be in every space in life. “Since when did we become so reliant on capitalism to provide us with stuff we need like food and clothing?” While money shouldn’t be made off someone else’s culture, Ahi urges, “if someone teaches you, go use those skills.”
For anyone who’s not sure where to start she recommends checking out local libraries or community centres to see if they already have providers of classes. “Learn from the people whose art comes from.” She recommends following your favourite artists to keep an eye out for wānanga they hold. “It’s such a cool way to meet people. It’s a beautiful way to connect.”
When I ask her what else she wants to make, a big grin spreads across her face. “So many things. The bigger the better.” She dreams of weaving a kahu kiwi and sailing mast. “I want to go to WOW and make a giant katipō spider with muka and I want it to walk in all of its creative beauty.”
And when a piece of work has served its purpose, whether that’s for looking or using, or both, Ahi says it’s time to dig a hole and bury it to return to Papatūānuku. The plants where Ahi harvested from earlier that morning were strong, healthy and harmoniously humming with its collective life force, and now I know why.
