Edith Amituanai is a quintessential New Zealand artist forging connection to the homeland (the Pacific) through her lens. In a documentary style, the visual artist presents herself as an anthropologist drawing viewers into the raw beauty and implicit flow that life has to offer. Amituanai photographs are socially constructed narratives of people she knows in settings the photographer and the subject feel at “home” in. From the end of my driveway series looks at the road as a site of freedom for children walking between home and school and how the socio-culturally charged concept of home migrates from one place to another, from one generation to another.
Edith won the inaugural Marti Friedlander Photography Award in 2007, and the following year she was the first Walters Prize nominee of Pacific descent. Edith has participated in a number of high profile solo and group exhibitions across Aotearoa and internationally in Australia, Austria, Taiwan, Indonesia Germany and France. In 2019 Amituanai received the NZ Order of Merit for services to community and photography and had a solo exhibition in the Adam Art Gallery called "Double Take". In 2021 Amituanai participated in the 10th Asia Pacifica Triennial of Contemporary art in Australia and the Biennale Jogja in Indonesia. Her artwork is held in national collections including Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.