Shannon Te Ao is an artist, writer and curator whose current research interests include performance and video art practices. The majority of his recent artistic output has investigated and responded to material drawn from Māori paradigms, testing the implications of alternative creative, social and linguistic models in relation to contemporary video art and other performative practices.

In 2013, Te Ao’s exhibition I Made my own Teeth, combined video and text-based art works to extend his interest in combining the poetic and political, responding to a variety of information ranging from Māori songs to political events. In this work comprising seven consecutive texts, Te Ao draws on Tweets made by Māori rights activist, Tame Iti, written while recently imprisoned. Pictorial vignettes of highly personal notations of daily observations, experience and thought, they operate in an indeterminate space that is open to the vagaries and possibilities of language.