Emma Ormsby (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Porou, Pākehā) was born in 2001 in Hamilton but grew up on the North Shore of Auckland New Zealand. Her artistic practice includes an array of media including but not limited to sculpture, photography, digital works, textiles and painting. Her work centres around Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) and explores concepts of colonisation, religion, identity, wā (spaces & time) and feminism. Emma uses a process of Kaupapa Māori methodology, creating collaborative works which seek to create a culturally educated audience and aid in the process of re-indigenisation of the mind and wā. Her practice explores elements of customary Māori art forms (Whakairo, Tukutuku, Kowhaiwhai, Whatu, Raranga) and seeks to centre them in the contemporary. She also uses a research-driven approach, exploring in-depth issues of cultural genocide, patriarchal systems and coercive persuasion employed by religious institutions. Emma’s engagement with these issues stems from her lived experience growing up in an urban environment within a high-demand religion disconnected and discouraged from embodying her identity. This builds on the first and second generations of contemporary Māori art practitioners, spanning from the 1960s to the 1990s.