FRIENDS LIKE HER (TV Series) with Karl Sölve Steven, d. Joshua Frizzell (2024)
UPROAR (Film) with Karl Sölve Steven, d. Paul Middleditch & Hamish Bennett (2023)
FOOLS & DREAMERS: REGENERATING A NATIVE FOREST (Documentary) d. Jordan Osmond and Antoinette Wilson (2019)
LIGHTSCAPES (Dance) with Shayne Carter, Royal New Zealand Ballet (2023)
ONEPŪ (Dance) with Paddy Free, choreographed by Louise Potiki Bryant (2019)
Ariana is a singer, composer, leading player of taonga puoro (Māori instruments) and New Zealand Arts Laureate. She writes waiata exploring themes relating to her Kāi Tahu identity and mana wahine, often drawing upon historical kōrero from her ancestors.
Ariana has three critically acclaimed solo albums, and has worked on many other collaborative music and multi-media projects spanning a 30-year creative career. She specialises in Aotearoa’s indigenous instruments, collectively known as taonga puoro. She has performed as a soloist and performer-composer with many of Aotearoa-New Zealand’s orchestras including the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, as well as chamber ensembles Stroma and the New Zealand String Quartet. Ariana is a member of art music quartet Tararua alongside Alistair Fraser, Ruby Solly, and Phil Boniface where they create innovative music melding strings, taonga puoro, and vocals, infused with southern Māori narratives who released their debut album Bird Like Men on their own label Oro Records NZ.
Ariana has co-composed music with Karl Sölve Steven for the 2023 feature Uproar, and the documentary Fools and Dreamers and for the series Friends Like Her. Over many years she has collaborated with fellow arts laureate Louise Pōtiki Bryant including on their award-winning music video Tuia; the show Onepū that Ariana co-wrote the music for with Paddy Free, and also performed in the national tour with Atamira Dance Company.
Her writing has appeared in Takahē, Turbine|Kapohau, Tupuranga, and Pantograph Punch. She has also contributed poems, chapters, and essays to several books, including the award-winning Bill Hammond: Across the Evening Sky. In 2022, Ariana published her book Mokorua: My Story of Moko Kauae through Auckland University Press, and also completed her MA in Creative Writing through the International Institute of Modern Letters. In 2023 Ariana was an Ursula Bethell writer in residence at the University of Canterbury, where she worked on a collection of poetry inspired by pūrākau attached to local Māori place names in Waitaha.
Her writing has appeared in Takahē, Turbine|Kapohau, Tupuranga, and Pantograph Punch. She has also contributed poems, chapters, and essays to several books, including the award-winning Bill Hammond: Across the Evening Sky. In 2022, Ariana published her book Mokorua: My Story of Moko Kauae through Auckland University Press, and also completed her MA in Creative Writing through the International Institute of Modern Letters. In 2023 Ariana was an Ursula Bethell writer in residence at the University of Canterbury, where she worked on a collection of poetry inspired by pūrākau attached to local Māori place names in Waitaha.