The installation depicted on the book cover is entitled A Place at the Kauri Table and represents a metaphorical ‘Kauri table’ with six place settings, each comprising personal artefacts either created or found by six migrant women. Some were brought from their country of origin, and some were an expression of their experience in Aotearoa.

In 2019, the first installation of A Place at the Kauri Table was performed in the Whanaungatanga symposium art exhibition at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT), Hawkes Bay. The creative works, artefacts and recorded stories were intended to reflect on the impact of Aotearoa arts education for a group of six migrant women graduates, a synthesis of their emotions, lived experiences and thoughts: drawn from my roles as visual artist, lecturer, curator and researcher. The idea of kinship formed around identifying a feminist table setting to tell our stories and to recognise the impact of Aotearoa immigration drawing on each art or teaching practice. The audience grasped that concept well, with seats to welcome each new or past migrant story. The transformations experienced by those six members of wia2020 (women immigrant artists 2020) seated at the metaphorical kauri table was collectively documented and developed in over three years of interactions.

To our delight, the metaphorically tabled works have been seen and heard widely and helped to raise awareness of the political and social impact of immigration on feminists, artists and generations of settled migrant groups in Aotearoa. The meaning of A Place at the Kauri Table is in its transformative power on the participants: all of us have experienced this affecting change in Aotearoa through uncertain times.

Moreover, wia2020 members and gallery audiences with intergenerational migrant links and NZ citizen status were duly reminded of being treated, on arrival, as aliens/others or outsiders. The new immigrants formally shared a perception of fewer civil rights and needed support to overcome scarce resources, halted education, loss of ethnic family ties and personal sacrifices as some of the challenges to be overcome while in their new host country.

The ‘insider outsider’ effect portrayed as intertextual immigrant experiences told by each member seated at the Kauri Table, as whanaunga (relations) or extended family. Central motives for immigration represented by art and artefacts through storytelling became a shared focus under the spotlight of arts installation and short film.