Abigail Aroha Jensen: cab–sous vide

cab–sous vide is a vacuum-sealed collection, a papahou (treasure box), a preserved moment, the bottom of the artist’s purse.

Located in The Dowse elevator cab, Kirikiriroa Hamilton-based artist Abigail Aroha Jensen presents her collection: cab – sous vide. She has transformed the elevator into a vessel of trinkets, which ascend and descend constantly to be admired by elevator users.

Jensen’s experimental installation references the slow-cooking and preserving technique sous vide, presenting a collection of semi-precious keepsakes, locally harvested muka and debris that have been vacuum-sealed to the elevator walls. The artist is thinking about how we might identify with collections of objects whilst considering potential to create our own personal whakapapa through the acts of everyday exchange.

Inspired by her time working with a small archive of taonga (treasures) and desolate land sites, she considers how we might suffocate the mauri (life force) of taonga due to our own unconscious desires or mauri moe. This concept is a connecting point in her artistic practice, as she thinks about how mauri transfers between the object and the body.

Abigail Aroha Jensen holds a BMA from the Waikato Institute of Technology, and Honours from Toihoukura, School of Māori Visual Arts. Recent exhibitions include Rope Play (I-IV), sites across Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Pōneke Wellington and Köln, Germany (2022-23); Spring Time is Heart-break: Contemporary Art in Aotearoa, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2023); Glitter Images, Grace Aotearoa (2024); and Inside my papahou: puoro tuatini. Her site, Désirée – ā whakamātao owha at the 2024 Busan Bienale, Korea.

This exhibition is curated by Felixe Laing, an independent curator based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.