Not because I had answers.
Because I had parts.
Mawhēriki's Anatomy is a self-dissection of identity, whakapapa, humour, trauma, home, risk, faith, and becoming.
The series is built from seven paintings, each one opening a different system inside the artist: support, risk, guardianship, learning, operation, standing, and becoming.
This is not anatomy in the medical sense. It is anatomy as self-dissection. The paintings cut open the artist's inner world and ask what it takes to rebuild yourself without losing where you come from.
05These works pull from tiki and wheku-inspired forms, Māori visual memory, graffiti marks, raw text, whānau stories, lyrics, jokes, old wounds, and the places that shaped the artist's eye.
They are not traditional carvings. They are not clean portraits. They are painted bodies, masks, systems, and mirrors.
Aunty energy becomes a support system.
Māui and Michael Jordan become a risk system.
Hine-nui-te-pō becomes a guardian system.
A school wharenui becomes a learning system.
An old trauma painting becomes an operating system.
A tall pou-like body becomes a standing system.
This is the tension of the work.
Together, the paintings ask: What made me? What hurt me? What held me? What did I inherit? What did I avoid saying? What do I carry from home? What do I need to cut open before I can move forward?
This is anatomy as memory. Anatomy as whakapapa. Anatomy as humour. Anatomy as survival. Anatomy as becoming.
07Chur Bei Rangi is a portrait of learning, memory, and looking up. Inspired by Te Whare o Rangi, the meeting house from the artist's school, the work personifies the whare as a teacher, guardian, and living presence.
The upward-looking figure reflects the feeling of standing before carved knowledge and wanting to rise toward it. Through red, black, blue, and yellow, the painting connects childhood memory, Māori carving influence, humour, and aspiration.
12I saw Te Whare o Rangi every day at school. Researched it. Studied it. Stood in front of carved histories every day. The work of carver Peni Taipa shaped my visual memory.
A wharenui isn't just architecture. It's a body. A teacher. A protector. A source of knowledge.
Chur bei, Rangi.
Said casual. To make the whare familiar, funny, intimate, personal.
The figure looks upward. Looking up at the carving. Looking up at the teacher. Looking up at Rangi. Wanting to rise toward that calibre of knowledge and art.
13Bad Buzz Eeyore is a portrait of Hine-nui-te-pō as guardian, truth-teller, and necessary "bad buzz." Drawing from the story of Māui's pursuit of immortality, the work reframes her not as a villain, but as the figure who protects the balance of life and death.
The title carries humour, depression, and quiet resilience, while the mask-like face, black ground, red body, and repeated marks create a portrait of transition, protection, and emotional weight.
16In the Māui story Hine-nui-te-pō is the bad buzz. She stops him getting immortality. Kills him.
Maybe she isn't the villain. Maybe she's the guardian protecting the cycle. If people lived forever, that would not be good. She keeps the cycle in order.
Sometimes the person who ruins the mood is telling the truth. Sometimes being a bad buzz is protection.
Brings the depression. Heaviness. Quiet resilience. Carrying sadness and still remaining. I connect that to wāhine energy — women holding so much of the world.
17For The Aunties is a playful dedication to the wāhine who hold, judge, laugh, support, and ground us. Built from tiki-inspired forms, graffiti marks, text, and raw colour, the work explores femininity, Māori identity, humour, and responsibility.
The figure is not one specific person, but a collective body — aunty, nan, sister, cousin, supporter, ancestor, and mirror. Beneath the joke sits a deeper question: what do we owe the people who believed in us, and how do we carry them forward through the work we make?
20Painted over an old painting of faces. Came back to it and put a big tiki-inspired body over the top.
The answer came back funny and simple — "Chur Aunty." That became the title. Not for one aunty. For all of them.
Down here thinking how can I fix this — Mau's song.21
Big Tongue Wobbling imagines Māui as Michael Jordan — a shape-shifting demigod figure trapped inside a square, but still ready to fly. Built from tiki-inspired form, casino colour, bones, symbols, and the energy of a playing card.
The work explores risk, gambling, greatness, and self-belief. The painting asks what happens when the urge to gamble is redirected away from chance and back toward the self. Rather than betting against yourself, what if the real gamble is backing yourself completely?
24Started as an experiment in fitting a tiki-inspired figure inside a square. The body feels caged in the box. Then it grew into Māui and Jordan — both shape-shifters, both about backing yourself, both about risk.
Jordan has the gambling stories. I've got my own. I've had a gambling problem. Still kind of do.
The painting flips it. Instead of gambling against yourself — bet on yourself.
What would happen if you put that energy into your own future?
From the Ali vs Jordan rap battle. Keeps it playful and absurd while carrying ideas about performance, confidence, risk.
25The painting the whole series is named for.
Mav's Anatomy is a self-dissection disguised as a painting. Built over an earlier work titled Playing the Fool, the piece carries traces of childhood memory, silence, family rupture, and trauma, then rebuilds them into a new visual system.
Influenced by the illustrated logic of Gray's Anatomy, the work treats the artist's body, memory, language, and culture as material to be opened, studied, and reorganised.
In the wider series, this work becomes the operating system: the place where fear, humour, whakapapa, sacrifice, art, and rebuilding all meet.
28That earlier work came from a painful place. Memories of my parents' breakup. Seeing my father playing up. Being asked by my mum and "playing the fool."
The new work doesn't erase the old one. It absorbs it. Covering. Cutting open. Rebuilding. Making a new body out of the old wound.
I was reading about it. The power wasn't the medical thing — it was how illustration changed how people understood the body. This painting applies that to the self. A Māori art anatomy. A trauma anatomy. A system anatomy.
Forced to find my way before the post-mortems. — Shaebaby29
My Suede Puma's Detour is a pou-like self-portrait about standing firm, marking closure, and carrying home in the body. Taking its title from Shaebaby's lyric "My suede Puma's detour," the work transforms the idea of being forced off course into a full-height figure planted on the whenua.
The corrected lyric — "feet planted on the whenua to mark closure" — gives the work its stance: closure is not being searched for, it is being declared through presence.
Added across the chest, 1KNGZXXII- refers to 1 Kings, Chapter 22, and indirectly to Ramoto / Wairoa, connecting the figure to home, scripture, and a family line of Anglican ministers.
34This canvas was given to me by a friend. Originally had a Michael Jordan print on it. I spray-painted shapes on it, turned it into a spider, used it for lyrics, then transformed it into this figure. The canvas itself took a detour.
At 500 × 1800 mm it's near human height. A standing presence.
A coded hometown tattoo. 1 Kings 22 → Ahab at Ramoth-Gilead → Ramoto → Wairoa. Home coded through scripture instead of written across the chest. Also a nod to a family line of Anglican ministers.
The detour is not failure. The detour is the route.35
The last painting hasn't been made yet. It can't be just another one. It has to complete the body.
When it's finished, I'll know what role it plays. Until then:
The collector who buys this painting becomes part of the story of how it got made.
Some you can still see. Some are buried.
Mav's Anatomy was Playing the Fool.
For The Aunties was an older painting of faces.
My Suede Puma's Detour was a Michael Jordan print, then a spider, then a wall for lyrics, then this.
Painting over doesn't erase the old work. It absorbs it. Covering. Cutting open. Rebuilding. Making a new body out of the old wound.
40Old layers visible in close-ups. Sketches scratched into the surface. Studio marks. Tape edges. Twink corrections. Pastel smudges. Spray over text over paint.
The work isn't trying to look clean. It's trying to look like a body of evidence.
The wall. The floor. The paint table. The half-empty cans. The sketches taped up. The unfinished one in the corner that's been waiting six months.
All seven paintings in this body were made here, in 2026.
Acrylic. Spray. Pastel. Twink. Oil pastel. Cardboard offcuts. Canvas pulled tight on a stretcher in the corner.
No assistants. No big studio. Just the wall, the paint, and the time it takes.
Mawhēriki is an artist working across painting, design, storytelling, and digital culture. His work blends tiki and wheku-inspired forms, graffiti energy, raw text, humour, and personal memory.
Through expressive faces and body-like figures, he builds contemporary Māori visual worlds that read playful at first, then open into deeper questions about whakapapa, whānau, trauma, faith, home, and becoming.
Mawhēriki's Anatomy is his most personal body of work to date — the first time he has cut himself open in paint.
Yes, I do speak in third person.
| # | Painting | Size | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | For The Aunties | 1220 × 910 | $4,200 |
| 02 | Big Tongue Wobbling | 760 × 760 | $1,800 |
| 03 | Bad Buzz Eeyore | 760 × 760 | $2,600 |
| 04 | Chur Bei Rangi | 610 × 810 | $2,200 |
| 05 | Mav's Anatomy | 1220 × 910 | $6,000 |
| 06 | My Suede Puma's Detour | 500 × 1800 | $6,000 |
| 07 | The Seventh | TBC | TBC |
| A3 · edition of 50 | $120 |
| A2 · edition of 30 | $220 |
| A1 · edition of 15 | $420 |
| Online + Digital PDF · 25pp | Free |
| Physical (signed, limited) | $49–$69 |
All prices NZD. Print pricing working — locks once printer quotes return.
46Enquire via the site or DM @mawheriki.png on Instagram. Quote the painting title. Bank transfer / Stripe / instalments by arrangement.
Shipping NZ-wide covered. Overseas by arrangement.
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