YOU ARE HERE by Whiti Hereaka and Peata Larkin — review by Stella

Beautiful production, beuatiful concept, and beautifully executed. The sixth book in the Kōrero series is a standout. You Are Here is a journey, a journey in language, a going home, a seeking of one’s place in a physical external space, and also in one’s interior self. Where do you belong? How do you go home when time and place have been disrupted? You go home by looking towards your land, your whenua. You find your culture in language, in pattern — in mark-making both literal and metaphorical. Reading Whiti Hereaka’s text, looking into Larkin’s drawings and paintings is mesmirising. Questions are provoked and thoughts step one to the next, building connections between the words and images on the page and the concepts they embody. Here there is a conversation between cousins who share whakapapa, through their words and images. As Hereaka cleverly uses the restrictions of the Fibonacci sequence in her text, Larkin’s work also has a pattern set down. Her drawings precise on the graph paper — pen-to-paper, point-to-point — building intricate relationships in space and on the page. In her artwork you see the conversation with weaving, tāniko, whakario and tukutuku patterns. The patterns building a language of connection, moving in unison with Hereaka’s text as she spirals, doubling her words and her thoughts, as she reaches for the elusive and the sure. As anger surfaces, along with shame, passion and determination. And as the language condenses in line with the sequence’s rules, you follow the pattern out and away to the end. Open this book and find on the first page, three words. “You are here.” They sit quiet, small and a little timidly in this white space. End this book and the same three words appear. “You are here” at the centre and determined, held firmly in a Larkin drawing. But the end is no end, it is another beginning, ready for what comes next. You Are Here is also, like the other books on this series, a place where excellent book production meets the content with purpose and care. (Kudos to Lloyd Jones and Massey University Press for this excellent series.) From the subtle embossed letters on the front cover to the paper stock, it is a tactile object — a book you want to enjoy and hold. You Are Here is both intense and lyrical. It is personal and universal. It is a journey of discovery and a work of strength.