Review: You are Here, by Whiti Hereaka and Peata Larkin

'Your bones are here, and here is in your bones.'

You are Here feels like a homecoming. Home: both the beginning and the end, te tīmatanga me te whakamutunga, of an endless journey, with each new beginning different in its own way. As we are told within the opening pages, 'You are here. Back at the beginning again. The beginning, yes, but not where you started.' To be at the beginning again is not the same thing as starting over. 

A collaboration between Whiti Hereaka (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa) and Peata Larkin (Te Arawa, Tūhourangi, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Tūwharetoa), You are Here is an experimental art book, a dialogue between words and images. Much like the adult colour books that became popular in the early-mid 2010s, this is an adult picture book, similarly inviting introspection, reflection, and meditative, mindful reading. 

Structurally, the text is based on the Fibonacci sequence starting at 3: three words, expanding, and then contracting again, returning to three, with 'you are here' marking the beginning and the end of the journey.  The imagery of the takarangi or double spiral is evoked in the text, symbolising both the beginning and the end, connecting concepts firmly grounded in te ao Māori with Fibonacci’s mathematical sequence visualised as a spiral. 

Written in the second person, You are Here is intimate. The story is your story. If you yourself are Māori, the narrative may feel painfully familiar, the second-person prose confronting. If you are not Māori, there may still be aspects of the story that you can relate to your journey, and if you cannot, then at the very least it will build empathy, allowing you to step into the experience and perspectives of another.

'These mountains knew you for generations before you arrived – they have watched your line grow. You are equally theirs – they lay claim to you as much as you lay claim to them.' I am reminded of the whakataukī: 'Hoki atu ki tōu maunga kia purea ai e koe ki ngā hau o Tāwhirimātea'. Our maunga, our awa, our roto, our moana; our landforms and bodies of water form the basis of our identities, both the personification and, at times, the literal embodiment of our ancestors: 'your bones are here, and here is in your bones.'

'Sometimes your mouth aches like you have been laughing and laughing – it is the pain of joy.' He reta aroha tēnei ki tō tātou reo rangatira. You are Here is also a love letter to te reo Māori, our language, and to our landscape markers that create our collective and individual identities. The connection between language and place is made explicit: 'There are things that you’ve just learnt that excite you – connections between word and place and history.' The process of language reclamation is presented as an inherently decolonial proposition: simultaneously both intensely personal and collective, and healing on both an individual and collective level.

The images, artfully crafted by visual artist Peata Larkin, are abstract enough to invite interpretation, and culturally patterned enough to convey specific meaning (for example, the poutama and pātiki patterns are frequently drawn upon). The imagery is a blend of abstract and representational, and the overall experience is sensory; colours, tones, geometry and patterns allow for both the perception of known meaning and emotional impressions. The interplay between the words and images is, in a word, sublime. 

You are Here, in both its format and content, manages to achieve something remarkable – it is abstract enough for us, as readers, to be able to insert ourselves into the narrative, but specific enough to say something meaningful. You are here. Kei konei koe. 

Reviewed by Jade Kake