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Overview
This extract originally appeared in Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2024).
This extract was authored by Rebecca Rice.
Two bearded men, one draped in classical robes, the other wearing a korowai and holding a tewhatewha, sit on either side of a fire, absentmindedly prodding at its embers. They are surrounded by the lush undergrowth of the New Zealand bush, which frames the conical contours of snowcapped Taranki Maunga. The figures, who are Socrates and Tītokowaru, are rendered in fine lines, typical of Greek vase painting, and appear deep in thought. This is the second in a suite of 11 lithographs by printmaker Marian Maguire titled Titokowaru’s Dilemma. The fundamental philosophical question underpinning this work, ‘What is virtue?’, was a favourite of Socrates and is a loaded question for the era referenced by Maguire’s work: What qualifies as ‘virtue’, as morally and ethically good, in a time of war, when each side believes it is justified in its actions?
Titokowaru’s Dilemma engages with the enigmatic and charismatic Tītokowaru, who was a highly successful military strategist, but who equally advocated for and adopted a pacifist approach to resisting colonisation. Maguire explores his story through the lens of ancient Greek myths and legends, developing, as art historian Elizabeth Rankin describes, a ‘distinctive visual language that draws on a very personal mix of Greek vase decoration, early voyager records and colonial paintings and photographs’.1 The specific colonial work drawn on here is the watercolour Mt Egmont from the Southward by Charles Heaphy, made in 1840 when he was a young artist-surveyor, fresh off the boat, who surely had little idea that within two decades there would be fighting over this very land and that he would be participating in it.
Maguire engages with big histories, but acknowledges that however much she researches, there is much that is not yet known, and there is still more that will never be known, concluding that ‘it is the gaps in factual accounting that make art possible’.2 Her work weaves together history, memory and mythmaking in equal measure, opening up the space between fact and fiction in the layered language of her images.
1 Elizabeth Rankin, ‘What is History? Socratic questions and colonial answers’, in Marian Maguire, Titokowaru’s Dilemma (PaperGraphica, Christchurch, 2011), p. 9.
2 Maguire, Titokowaru’s Dilemma, p. 97. Mindful of the implications of engaging with the figure of Tītokowaru, Maguire established contact with his descendants in South Taranaki, and in March 2018 she gifted a work, Te Koha, to the family in a ceremony at Tawhitinui marae. The hapū, Ngāti Hauā, will be looking after Te Koha on behalf of Ngāruahine as a whole.