Ayesha Green

For Ayesha Green, being an artist means there's little distinction between her work and her life. Art is always on her mind – it’s a tool she uses to “wrestle with complicated ideas about our reality”.

“Being an artist isn't really a nine-to-five job, where you might go home, switch off and pursue hobbies – it permeates my every waking moment,” she says. “I’m also lucky because the industry I work in is so dynamic and so interesting that if I'm not physically in the studio working, I’m doing something art-related.”

Raised in Hamilton, Ayesha earned a Bachelor of Media Arts from the Waikato Institute of Technology before graduating from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 2014 with a Master of Fine Arts. In 2016, she returned to university to complete a Graduate Diploma in Arts, specialising in museums and cultural heritage.

“Through my masters degree, I had learnt the language – art as a visual language – but I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to say in that language,” she says. “I decided to return to university as I had some pressing questions around various socio-political issues within New Zealand nationhood, and I wanted answers and some direction about how to seek those answers.”
Ayesha sees art not only as a powerful vehicle to invite reflection and spark new ideas about themes like history, the future and society, but also as an academic pursuit in its own right.

“While artists might not write papers or publish books, we instead present artworks that can critique, introduce and play with academic ideas.”

Today, her work spans the fields of drawing, painting and sculpture, with her painting style characterised by a block colour and flattened image style. Often examining histories of Māori and Pākehā representation, much of her work to date has focused on “mātauraka Māori, nation-building and the relationship between empire and Indigeneity”.

Having been exhibited widely across Aotearoa – including at City Gallery Wellington, Tauranga Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Auckland Art Gallery – Ayesha has also completed artist residencies as far afield as Brazil, New York and Rarotonga. In 2019 she was named the winner of the National Contemporary Art Award and in 2020 she was the inaugural recipient of the Arts Foundation’s Springboard Award. She has also received numerous other prestigious awards, including the Rydal Art Prize in 2021 and the Harriet Friedlander Residency in 2024.

Despite her success, Ayesha is quick to note she wouldn’t be where she is without the support of others.

“I think there is this romantic idea of an artist alone in their studio pursuing some burning passion,” she says. “But in reality, it’s about building genuine and caring relationships with people. The only way that I can be an artist is because of the many people who have given me opportunities, shared ideas, opened doors, thought about my work and generally supported me in so many different ways.”

Looking ahead to the future, Ayesha says that while she generally doesn’t set career goals, she does have a number of specific works she would like to bring to life.

“I have a few bodies of work that I want to make, but they are expensive and involve a lot of research. Usually, it's about waiting for the right opportunity to present itself; the right gallery space, the right budget. I usually sit with these ideas for years, just waiting for the right moment.”