Unlike much of the world, Auckland welcomed 2021 with New Year’s Eve celebrations in the thousands, and many traveled across the country or retreated to beach-front locations. There was a celebratory air, like we had come out the other side of a pandemic with very slight scratches while it continued to ravage the rest of the world. Our pandemic experience was a distortion of what others knew.
With our place in a vast ocean being our protection from the rest of the world, New Zealand artists and curators forwent the usual international travels, and instead turned inward to
