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Abigail Dougherty/Stuff
Fashion designer Lindah Lepou is the first recipient of the Toi Kō Iriiri Queer Arts Award.
Fashion designer Lindah Lepou took the stage to enthusastic cheers as she received the inaugural Toi Kō Iriiri Queer Laureate Award at the 2022 Arts Foundation, Te Tumu Toi Laureate Awards.
Lepou joined six other artists recognised for their contribution to Aotearoa arts, across multiple disciplines, at a live gala event at Auckland’s Aotea Centre on Friday.
Celebrated for her “Pacific couture”, often using Pasifika influences and traditional materials, Lepou’s work combines fashion, art and her fa’afafine identity.
The Toi Kō Iriiri Queer award is the first of its kind in Aotearoa and was chosen by an all-queer judging panel.
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Accepting the award in bare feet, and wiping away a tear, Lepou thanked Hall Cannon, who has funded the award for the next nine years.
“I want to thank the panel for choosing me – you got it correct,” she laughed.
“This represents all the other LGBT community and the artists that don’t get acknowledged,” she told Stuff. ”So I’m celebrating them as well.”
Hundreds of artists, designers, creatives and art fans attended the gala event. Jessica Palalagi, kaiwhakahaere matua (general manager) of the Arts Foundation, Te Tumu Toi encouraged everyone before the ceremony to enjoy the party.
The evening was hosted by actor, director and Arts Foundation, Te Tumu Toi trustee Tanea Heke, and kicked off with a surprise performance by renowned dance troupe Black Grace, who performed an original percussion-led a capella version of Lorde’s Royals to a silent crowd.
Also celebrated during the ceremony was activist Tame Iti – known for his work as an artist, poet and actor and New Zealand’s most recognisable face of Māori resistance – who received the Burr/Tatham Trust Award for excellence in multidisciplinary art.
An emotional Iti accepted the award and said he never went to art school but, “I had a feeling”.
Shane Cotton, who was presenting the award to Iti, said the activist had “told his story his way”.
“Tame does everything with such humility,” he said.
Seven practising artists were recognised during the evening, who will join an alumnus of 113 laureates celebrated over the past 22 years. A total of $30,000 was awarded to the recipients, funded by art fans across Aotearoa.
Known for their impressive large-scale art installations, Wāhine Māori group Mata Aho Collective, who also won the 2021 Walters Prize, received the My Art Visual Award.
Multimedia installation artist Dr Maureen Lander was awarded the Theresa Gattung Female Arts Practitioners Award. The Taranaki-based artist weaves and runs weaving workshops under her long-time label KareNZ Kitz. In 2020 she was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services in Māori art.
Māori jeweller and Ngāi Tahu artist Areta Wilkinson was presented the Jillian Friedlander Te Moana-Nui-A-Kiwa Award by 2016 laureate Peter Robinson. The only South Island-based laureate this year, Wilkinson has been making Māori-inspired jewellery for more than 30 years.
Acclaimed playwright Hone Kouka MNZM received the Sir Roger Hall Theatre Practitioner Award. Kouka has written 13 plays throughout his career, his most recent of which, Ngā Rorirori, delves into the effects of capitalism on Māori and indigenous communities.
Award-winning novelist essayist short-story writer Paula Morris MNZM, who recently won a complaint after accusing Creative NZ assessors of bias, was awarded the 2022 Arts Foundation, Te Tumu Toi Award for literature.
The 2022 laureates join previous recipients such as musicians Shayne Carter, Coco Solid and Moana Maniapoto, filmmakers Taika Waititi, Dame Gaylene Preston and Florian Habicht and visual artists John Pule, Ann Robinson and Michael Parekōwhai.
Stuff is a partner of The Arts Foundation, Te Tumu Toi, fuelling artists and creativity in Aotearoa.
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