Robert Jahnke

Robert Jahnke is considered one of Aoterora’s leading contemporary Māori artists, and is a highly respected educator who works as an historian, teacher, researcher, writer and advocate for Māori and indigenous arts nationally & internationally. He contributes to Māori Development through his teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level, his research into traditional Māori carving and his academic writing straddling art education, contemporary and traditional Māori art, and identity politics.

Jahnke’s artistic practice interrogates socio-political and historical structures in Aotearoa. He employs language, text, and symbol with form and pattern to create a complex discursive space that explores

political issues facing Māori people, as well the relationship between Māori and European colonisers and the impact of Christianity on Māori culture. Recent work has focused on peoples differing perceptions of reality, according to historical facts and circumstance. His playful use of iconographic symbols - coupled with light and reflection - present and ‘idealist framework’ which reconfigure form and meaning, bringing us closer to other paths to knowledge.

Jahnke was raised at Waipiro Bay on the East Coast. He went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, and a Masters in Experimental Animation from California Institute of the Arts. Jahnke was awarded a Doctor of Māori Studies from Massey University and was instrumental in establishing Toioho ki Āpiti, the Māori Visual Arts programme. In 2017 and he became an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori art and education and has been the recipient of a number of prestigious art awards, including most recently the Paramount Award at the Wallace Art Awards in 2019, and in 2020 he was awarded a Te Waka Toi Award for "outstanding contribution to ngā toi Māori and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi the same year. In 2023, Jahnke received an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award, which recognises practitioners for their outstanding practice as well as their significant impact.

Jahnke’s work been exhibited widely and is included in of significant public, private and corporate collections, including: The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki , Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, The Chartwell Trust, The Art Gallery Of New South Wales.