Self-isolation is hard. Art can help everyone. Artist in Residence is an immersive podcast series made in collaboration with ten New Zealand artists across theatre, music, poetry and dance. Each artist has made you a 15-minute personalised performance to help with one thing you might be feeling in isolation.

Ruby Solly is a Kai Tahu / Waitaha writer and musician. She has played with artists such as Yo-yo Ma as part of his Bach Project, The New Zealand String Quartet, Trinity Roots, Whirimako Black, Orchestra Wellington, Rikki Gooch, and Ariana Tikao. She also works as a session musician and has been recorded as a cellist on over twenty different albums.

Ruby is a taonga pūoro player and therapist with a first class masters in music therapy where she conducted kaupapa Māori research into the use of taonga pūoro in acute mental health. As a taonga pūoro player and therapist, she is privileged to work around the country with people from all walks of life sharing the taonga of her ancestors. She will be beginning a PhD to further her research this year. Ruby is also a published writer who has had poetry and creative non-fiction published in Landfall, Sport, Poetry NZ, Starling, Mimicry, Minarets, E-tangata, The Spinoff and here at The Pantograph Punch. Victoria University Press will be publishing her debut book of poetry Tōku Pāpā in 2021.

Artist in Residence: Ruby Solly

Woven

Ruby has created Woven, an audio performance for lockdown, to listen to when you feel disconnected from whānau, whakapapa and whenua.

Listen to this on your evening walk.

This episode is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, our RSS feed and right here.

If you're listening from mobile, Apple, Spotify and Soundcloud are preferable to the below player (as the sound won't cut out when your phone goes to sleep!)

We recommend headphones.

Each artist has provided you with sleeve notes for their episode. Ruby's sleeve notes are below.

Sleeve notes for Woven
by Ruby Solly

You are here
On the path
As we all are.
Each of us with a trail
This time not of breadcrumbs
But of long lines of thread
Woven by those who’ve made us
who we are now

Māori translates as normal. To be shut in and away from those we are connected with is therefore outside of being Māori; outside of the normal. But how do we still connect to whānau, whakapapa and whenua when we are shut away from all the things that remind us of who we are?

We look inward at where we have been, and how we have been woven with the histories and stories of others. We learn that we are both our ancestors and our descendants. We watch the paths they have walked and will walk, all while walking our own.

We are here to stand in this time.
To wade through it,
to move to the other side
of deep water rising.
For they have taught us
how to swim
merely by doing so
themselves
and having us watch.
Our very bodies are filled with water.
We are swimming within ourselves
constantly,
Constantly
they are swimming in us.

It’s time to take your place on the path. It’s time for you to weave yourself with the all around. Join me, my whānau of taonga pūoro, and cello, on your walk tonight. We are all here with you.

Episode credits

Woven was created and performed by Ruby Solly
Sound design: Alistair Fraser and Byron Coll

Theme music: C. Frances Duncan and Ruby Solly
Graphic design: Sarah Gladwell
Produced by Kate Prior for The Pantograph Punch
Made with the support of NZ on Air

You can listen to Artist in Residence: Ruby Solly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Soundcloud, our RSS feed and above.