Marian Maguire is best known for her lithographs and etchings which mix New Zealand history with Greek mythology and raise questions about colonialism and the Western mindset.
“My [colonial] research had laid bare uncomfortable truths about how I came to be born here on these beautiful islands, with the advantage of being a member of the dominant group. I wanted to know what drove my forebears to voyage far from their ancestral home; to claim and transform land; to institute new systems that overrode existing ones. I had been raised in a Christian household where forgiveness and moral circumspection were valued principles, and the brutality of colonisation was irreconcilable with my understanding of the Christian ethos. Did my ancestors not know what the real effect on Māori was, or were they wilfully ignorant? One-sentence answers to this question failed to satisfy and I wanted to know more about the Western mindset. I began a zigzagging crash course through Western history.”
She had intended to limit her study to the Age of Enlightenment, during which the Endeavour set sail, but curiosity led her further back. The two main works in the 2022 exhibition of The Enlightenment Project – Sight and Blindness I: Reason and Sight and Blindness II: Expansion – are shaped as eyes whose irises are packed with books; they map her investigations. Between them they track from Ancient Greece, Rome, Middle Ages, Reformation and the birth of Modern Europe, through wars, religious upheavals, scientific discoveries, the industrial revolution and political changes. Along the way she notes ships setting sail and the West’s rapid expansion around the globe. This part of the project brought her to the end of the nineteenth century, by which time Aotearoa New Zealand was an established British Colony, Western structures had supplanted indigenous ones, and Māori had been pushed to the periphery.
To counterpoint the European focus of the project thus far, Maguire created a large work with a parallel perspective. She visualised the Māori creation story: the separation of Ranginui (Sky Father) and Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) by their son Tāne-mahuta. Pushing his parents apart Tāne let the light in and thus life flourished. In this world view, people are part of the natural realm not the owners of it. Recognising this position they/we must acknowledge and respect the natural forces that shape our existence.
Maguire made a further sequence of four World works that leap from prehistory – when trees and animals were abundant and humans were an ape amongst apes – and continue into the Anthropocene Era when Homo Sapiens has come to dominate other life forms and now energetically exploits the Earth’s resources. This brings us to questions about the future.

Maguire says: “The Enlightenment Project is about learning and understanding, which is somewhat challenging when the world is in such a state of flux. The project is therefore ongoing.”