Even as the pandemic rolls on, Te Papa Tongarewa is assembling objects that will chart Aotearoa’s coronavirus journey
n a table in a back room of New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, is a canvas bag emblazoned with an image of prime minister Jacinda Ardern as Wonder Woman. Below her armoured arms are the words “Go hard & go early” – theNext to the bag is a set of three tennis balls, with phrases roughly scrawled in pen: “we do not consent”; “hands off our children”; “Pfizer kills”.
Some items tell a single story, others spark a broad debate, many objects call and respond to one another. For Te Papa each object – be it scavenged, bought or gifted – is another colour in the palette used to paint a portrait of a country experiencing a pandemic, while still living in its midst. The team decided on the themes it wanted to document, including life in lockdown, the government’s response, spontaneous community messaging in city streets, Māori perspectives and the experiences of ethnic minorities. The themes broadened as the pandemic evolved to include the vaccine rollout and the anti-vaccine sentiment.
Those experiences, which ought to have warranted empathy, were instead often drowned out by racist backlash. Asian New Zealander experiences in the collection are not limited to responses to racism. But two of the most striking items are a T-shirt made by Chinese New Zealand artist Cat Xuechen Xiao, who is originally from Wuhan, emblazoned with “I am from Wuhan – this city is not a virus, I am not a virus”, and a T-shirt made by writer Helene Wong with the text “I’m not from Wuhan, Drop the Pitchfork”.
Including the public in the formation of a collection also gives the population a sense of ownership over its narrative, she says.
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