Mahiriki Tangaroa
New Zealand-born Cook Islands photographer and painter
Mahiriki Tangaroa (born 1973, Auckland, New Zealand) is a New Zealand-born Cook Islands photographer and painter. She is a former director of the Cook Islands National Museum. She is recognised as a leading contemporary Cook Islands artist, and her work is regularly exhibited in galleries in New Zealand and the Cook Islands. She also exhibits internationally in Paris, Venice, and New York.
Early life
Of Cook Islands heritage, Tangaroa was born in Auckland, New Zealand, and grew up in Christchurch. Tangaroa emigrated to the Cook Islands when she was 24 years old. Tangaroa majored in photography at Ilam School of Fine Arts in the University of Canterbury, before returning to the Cook Islands in 1998.
Art career
In 1998, Ian George curated Paringa Ou, the first major exhibition of contemporary art by Cook Island artists residing in New Zealand featuring artists such as Ani O'Neill, Sylvia Marsters, Mahiriki Tangaroa, Michel Tuffery, Jim Vivieaere, Ian George, and Kay George, the exhibition travelled to the National Museum in Fiji, Cook Islands National Museum, as well as Gus Fisher Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. The exhibition was sponsored by the New Zealand High Commission.
Tangaroa began to paint in 1999.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q99138318. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1998 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mahiriki Tangaroa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.