These photographs are stills from Ana Iti’s moving image work, I am a salt lake, 2023, commissioned by The Physics Room. The film brings together footage from Kapara-Te-Hau (the salt lakes in Te Tau Ihu, near Blenheim), abstracted diagrams drawn on glass, and a first person text, registering the difficulty of finding language sufficient to articulate the relationship with the different whenua, seas, lakes, winds, houses, that the artist passes through. In the work Iti draws lines on a glass windowpane, which is semi-opaque with condensation. This part of the work was filmed in Heretaunga Hastings, where the artist has recently relocated.

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Ana Iti (Te Rarawa, Pākehā) is an artist currently based in Te Matau-a-Maui Hawkes Bay. She works across sculpture, video, and text. Iti’s work explores poetic and structural relationships between language and our environment, as well as the practices of shared and personal history-making. Iti has a BFA (Sculpture) from the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Ōtautahi Christchurch and a MFA from Toi Rauwhārangi Massey University in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. Iti was the recipient of the Grace Butler Memorial Award in 2022 and is a nominee for the 2024 Walters Prize.