Dr Leonie Ngahuia Mansbridge
Dr Leonie Ngahuia Mansbridge
Born in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Living in Walyalup Country, Fremantle, Western Australia.
Education: 2018, Leonie completed a Creative Doctorate through Curtin University, Western Australia, researching “The Cross-Cultural Corridor: Performing Māori/Pākehā Identities”. Masters of Arts (Visual Arts), with distinction, and a Bachelor of Arts (Art) (Honours) First Class, at Curtin University. Her creative arts practice is key to her story-ing and she continues to engage with issues of identity and colonisation — her practice functions as both artwork and social document. Leonie has exhibited consistently for twenty years in Australia, China, France, Bangladesh and New Zealand. She has received a number of awards, including Invited Artist to the Joondalup art awards. Leonie has been invited to exhibit in the Bangladesh Biennale.
Leonie works in her home studio, where her recent abstract paintings seek to explore her identity and cultural understanding; she uses the landscape to connect through her Māori heritage. Painting the land as an extension of who she is, a conduit through to her indigenous heritage. Land is central to our identity as Māori people of Aotearoa ,New Zealand , the land postulates an awareness of belonging, Māori spiritual belonging of the land encompasses our identity physical and spiritual, and integral of the survival and wellbeing.
