Ngarino Ellis Curiosity about the role of art across cultures has characterised the career of Professor Ngarino Ellis (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Pōrou). Her undergraduate dreams of diplomat life have taken on new meaning since spending time in museums and art galleries, compelling her to create pathways between taonga and communities, scholars and artists, both in Aotearoa and overseas. Speaking, teaching, curating and writing about taonga especially collaboratively has been recognised nationally and internationally, and continues to fuel recent projects, including Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art with Deidre Brown and Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, and Ngā Taonga o Wharawhara: The World of Māori Body Adornment.
Vera Mey is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History & Theory at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Catherine’s College. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, she was on the founding curatorial team at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and is a founding co-editor of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia (NUS Press). She was awarded her PhD from SOAS University of London in 2024 for a thesis on critical regionalism in Southeast Asian art after the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung. In 2024 she was Co-Artistic Director of the Busan Biennale, Seeing in the Dark. With Sarah E. James, she is co-editing the volume Against Imperialism: On the Threshold of a Post-Capitalist World (Sternberg/MIT, forthcoming 2027).
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