Rangi Kipa, a leading figure in contemporary Māori art, has consistently pushed the boundaries of traditional material culture, blending ancestral forms with experimental mediums to forge a visual language that is both rooted and radical. Among his many innovations, one of the most captivating is his fusion of pounamu—New Zealand’s revered greenstone—and beadwork, a marriage of two distinct practices that speaks to his overarching mission of cultural reclamation, decolonial expression, and material transformation. Kipa’s work exists at the intersection of taonga (treasure), wearable sculpture, and contemporary design, and his approach to beads as both adornment and narrative device reveals new dimensions of Māori storytelling.
Born in Taranaki and steeped in the traditions of his iwi (tribe), Kipa was classically trained in whakairo (carving), especially in wood and stone, and he carries the spiritual and formal responsibilities that come with this lineage. His early career focused on revitalizing traditional Māori carving techniques, especially in the context of tā moko (tattoo design) and adornment. However, Kipa has never been content to merely reproduce the past. Instead, he explores how traditional forms can evolve in a globalized world, engaging with new materials and aesthetics while maintaining the mana (spiritual authority) of his ancestors. This ethos led him to experiment with unconventional pairings, including the integration of glass, resin, and more recently, beads with pounamu.
Pounamu, or nephrite jade, is a stone of immense cultural importance in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Valued not only for its beauty and durability but for its spiritual potency, pounamu has long been fashioned into pendants, weapons, tools, and heirlooms. Each piece carries whakapapa (genealogy), connecting its wearer to land, kinship lines, and cosmological forces. Kipa honors these meanings while expanding the potential of pounamu beyond its traditional formats. In his bead fusion works, pounamu serves as the anchor—a carved base or centerpiece—from which beadwork radiates, surrounds, or flows. These hybrid creations transform a static form into a multidimensional surface, where beads function like text, cloaking, or energy fields that respond to the form they enshrine.
One of his most notable works in this vein is Whakareretanga, a breastplate-like adornment in which a central pounamu form—carved in a stylized koru (spiral) design—sits at the heart of an elaborate beaded collar that extends outward in concentric arcs. The beadwork, composed of tiny glass seed beads sourced from Japan and the Czech Republic, is meticulously stitched in patterns inspired by tukutuku (woven latticework) panels and kōwhaiwhai (rafter painting) motifs. The color palette—deep greens, matte blacks, ochres, and nacreous whites—echoes both the natural hues of Aotearoa’s landscapes and the spiritual aura associated with sacred adornment. The result is a powerful visual harmony between the depth of pounamu and the intricate rhythm of bead patterns, each enhancing the mana of the other.
Kipa’s fusion of pounamu and beads is not simply aesthetic—it is conceptual and political. Beadwork, often associated with non-Māori decorative traditions, particularly African and Indigenous American practices, is repurposed in Kipa’s hands as a medium of Māori expression. This act is not one of appropriation but of trans-Indigenous solidarity, recognizing shared colonial histories and aesthetic resistances. By integrating beadwork into his pounamu carvings, Kipa challenges narrow definitions of authenticity and invites a broader, more dynamic vision of what Māori art can encompass.
Furthermore, beads introduce a temporal quality to the work. Each bead, sewn or threaded individually, speaks to time, labor, and repetition—a counterpoint to the weighty permanence of pounamu. In combining the two, Kipa suggests a continuum between the enduring and the ephemeral, the ancestral and the contemporary. This duality is present in works like Te Kore, where the chaos of the void—referencing the Māori creation narrative—is rendered in a swirling arrangement of tiny beads around a central, uncarved piece of pounamu. The contrast between the raw stone and the meticulously ordered beadwork evokes the moment before form emerges from formlessness, a meditation on becoming and potential.
Kipa’s process often involves collaboration with bead artists and weavers, including members of his own whānau (family) and wider community. These partnerships are integral to the ethos of the work, reinforcing the communal nature of Māori creativity and the collective knowledge embedded in every piece. Beads are not merely used as embellishment—they carry the wairua (spirit) of their makers, and their placement becomes an act of dialogue with the stone, the story, and the wearer.
These works are exhibited in both cultural and contemporary art contexts, from marae-based exhibitions to major international biennales. Audiences are drawn to their tactile intensity and the way they reconfigure familiar forms. In institutions, Kipa’s hybrid adornments challenge curatorial categories, disrupting the binary between traditional and contemporary, art and artifact. In Māori contexts, they inspire pride and provoke reflection on how taonga can evolve without losing their spiritual resonance.
Rangi Kipa’s pounamu and bead fusion is a testament to the adaptability and vitality of Indigenous art in the 21st century. It reveals how materials can carry stories across time, space, and cultural boundaries, and how innovation need not sever ties with tradition but can deepen them. By integrating beadwork into the sacred language of pounamu, Kipa has expanded the expressive potential of both mediums, forging a visual and spiritual vocabulary that speaks not only to Māori identity but to the shared global need for beauty, resilience, and cultural continuity. His work invites us to see each bead and each carved curve as part of a living whakapapa—a chain of creation, resistance, and renewal.