Systema Naturae (450ml clear), 2024 New Zealand Florins (1947 - 1965), Lead Sheep, Sistema™ Lunch Box 450ml clear 135 x 135 x 30

The Sistema™ lunch boxes of the Systema Naturae series are engraved with pāua inlay, the Latin word for the ‘knowable whole,’ glistening through traditions of Māori ornamentation that adorn the stackable containers. The lunch boxes carry no sustenance; instead, they bear symbols of the Empire that a child might collect: coins of a foreign monarch, red-clad toy soldiers, and sheep made of lead. Systema Naturae inverts power structures within the lunch boxes, their contents claimed as vitrines – clipped, sealed, and displayed, as conventions of Western art are repurposed and critically engaged from a Māori perspective. 

The Scholastics series of monochromatic paintings efface the pages of The School Journal of New Zealand, a publication founded in 1907 that continues to instruct through literary form. White’s recurrent whare in kōkōwai is transposed onto sepia pages from the 1920s, a painterly intervention alluding to kaupapa Māori prohibited by the Native Schools Act (1867). Through the literary ‘Dominion’ that preceded the Māori Renaissance, White creates a counterfactual and attests to the absence of wānanga atop the propaganda pamphlets for children.

Across all the works of Whakapapa Platistcus, there is a learner unlearning, a child who speaks back, attesting to their own ways of knowing through systems of indoctrination.

Please contact the gallery for a full catalogue of Whakapapa Platistcus.