A TVNZ journalist says she was “shocked” and “taken aback” after discovering she was one of two Māori women an Auckland artist painted without consent, after being alerted to the art work for sale online.
Te Karere's Oriini Kaipara said she was made aware of the painting when an image of the portrait, by artist Samantha Payne, was sent to her in a private message on Instagram.
“I got a shock because the first thing I saw was this [moko kauae] and I know my kauae, I know my moko, and I just thought, ‘What?,’” Kaipara said in a Facebook Live. "Then I saw a pricetag on it and then immediately, my blood boiled."
She said she then went to the artist's page, where she saw the portrait "pretty much being branded as this empowerment woman."
Te Karere's Oriini Kaipara received Facebook messages asking if portraits by Samantha Payne were of her. (Source: Other)
Kaipara took to her Facebook page seeking help.
"Help. Someone is selling my moko. I’m not against artists, journos and whomever else using my image to promote our ao Māori and Māoritanga but selling MY moko for profit and for YOUR self-gain is damn disrespectful to say the very least," she wrote.
"To me, it was wrong because one, I had never, ever heard from her or heard of her - the lady, the artist in question - and I just felt disappointed and really ripped off that she didn't even have the courage to ask me, first and foremost, if it would be OK," she said.
Kaipara said she feels "out of sorts" as soon as money is involved "because this was never - and still won't be, it won't ever be, not for me - something to sell, to make money."
"I would rather go to a flea market or something and sell my leftover clothes or whatever - sell something, be more innovative - than go and grab somebody's kauae, paint it as best I can and sell it off."
However, Kaipara said while she had a heated moment upon seeing the image, she did not want to be negative.
"I don't want to fight, I don't want to be negative. I don't want to be taumaha [harsh] - that's not how I want to spend Mother's Day, being taumaha, and having anger towards somebody I don't know and I have actually never met."
She later had a meeting with artist Samantha Payne on teleconferencing app Zoom, which Kaipara said was important because it's "really rife in what happens to our taonga, ourselves, our mana. "
"For me to get through this day and to move beyond this, it meant everything to me for her to talk to me and just see one another.
"This was a good learning lesson for me on how to deal with my emotions and reflect on what's important to me."
A portrait of Taaniko Nordstrom, who is herself a portrait artist, was also done without Nordstrom's consent.
"Although it didn't exactly look like me, I knew straight away the reference photo," Nordstrom said on Facebook Live.
She said the reference photo was taken on top of the Rockefeller building in New York in 2014 "with no money, we were sleeping on one couch, top and tailing, of her brother's mate's house in the middle of Hell's Kitchen."
"That hurt me, because without even realising it, she took the context of that image and the hard mahi that I know me and my sister-in-law had put into it right out of it," she said.
"Straight away, I thought, 'Dang, that's me'. I, like you, was hurt."
Nordstrom said when she clicked on the comments section, she realised she was "going for a 'special rate.'"
"I was getting sold, an image of me was being sold, and that I was going for a special rate. I think that the wording, unfortunately, really irked me."
Payne has since withdrawn the portraits from public sale. She did not return calls from 1 NEWS yesterday.
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