Our Days of Harvest continues Mahiriki Tangaroa's ongoing exploration of Cook Islands contemporary identity, examining how inherited knowledge and cultural values might inform present-day challenges. The exhibition contrasts traditional concepts of harvest with contemporary debates surrounding seabed mining, questioning what is gained when longstanding practices are abandoned and what wisdom may still reside within them.
Traditionally, harvest implied cultivation, stewardship and the collective sharing of abundance. It was a process measured not only by what was gathered, but by the relationships and responsibilities that sustained it.
In this new body of work, Tangaroa places these values alongside the emerging discourse surrounding the extraction of polymetallic nodules from the deep ocean. While seabed mining presents the prospect of significant economic opportunity for the Cook Islands, it also raises unresolved questions regarding environmental responsibility, ownership and the equitable distribution of wealth.
Rather than offering definitive answers, Tangaroa invites reflection on how societies assign value, manage resources and imagine prosperity. Through a visual language informed by Cook Islands history, mythology and contemporary life, the exhibition reconsiders the meaning of harvest today. What does it mean to gather from the land and sea? Who benefits from abundance? And how might traditional understandings of stewardship contribute to decisions that will shape future generations?
Our Days of Harvest is both a celebration of cultural continuity and a timely consideration of one of the most significant conversations facing the Cook Islands in the twenty-first century.
