Carved from ancient kauri heartwood – recovered from a buried prehistoric forest in Te Tai Tokerau, Aotearoa New Zealand – Native Tongue holds land-memory and ancestral presence. The giant tree stood for more than 2,000 years before it fell and was buried; preserved for millennia in the anaerobic chemistry of a coastal peat swamp. Carefully extracted, the timber was then dried in temperature-controlled conditions for seven years. A rare taonga / treasure, this kauri is radiocarbon-dated at over 45,000 years old – predating the end of the last Ice Age, early cave painting in Western Europe, and human migration to Aotearoa. This tongue is older than language.

Native Tongue speaks as both I-beam and body – an upright “I” that reads as I/One/First, a one-word, one number message which shape-shifts as the viewer encircles it. Monumental in scale, the form swells and recedes, moving from an enveloping totem to a columnar post or pouwhenua. The warm golden grain reprises the sensory realm of ancient forests and draws the hand to touch – another kind of listening. Here, earth-born materials anchor the human to place, while “tongue” names a threshold: where matter becomes medium and breath becomes message. Now a new antiquity, Native Tongue marks the convergence of primordial connection, present-day communication, and future networks – beginning again to silver with age.