Aotearoa à la Rousseau

QT Museum Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand · 2023

Created as an extension of the earlier Rousseau in Aotearoa mural, on the opposite side of the building, Aotearoa à la Rousseau is a large-scale public artwork measuring 5.20 × 3.20 m.

Henri Rousseau never travelled to New Zealand; every landscape he painted was born of pure imagination. With this mural, Heimler and Proc extend that imaginative licence beyond the Douanier’s lifetime, transplanting his dreamlike vision into Aotearoa. At the heart of the composition floats a hybrid vessel, part Viking drakkar, part Venetian gondola, painted in radiant blue in place of a traditional waka, a form Rousseau himself never encountered. Surrounding it, native New Zealand birds and plants are rendered with the meticulous stylisation of Rousseau, yet infused with the heightened luminosity and distinctive chromatic intensity characteristic of Heimler and Proc. The work becomes a vibrant, cross-cultural dialogue that carries the exotic paradise of the naïve master into the Southern Hemisphere.g