Shona Rapira Davies

Shona Rapira Davies (born 1951) is a New Zealand sculptor and painter of Ngati Wai Māori descent. She first studied at the Auckland College of Education, majoring in art, and later in Dunedin at Otago Polytechnic, graduating with a Diploma in Fine Arts in 1983. In 1989 she was awarded the prestigious Frances Hodgkins Fellowship. She is well known for her landscape sculpture commission for Te Aro Park in central Wellington. She exhibits widely; both as a sculptor and as a painter. Rapira Davies is interested in the empowerment of Māori women in spite of perceived racism (in a Pākehā culture) and sexism (within the patriarchal structure of Māori tribal organisation). She uses her art work to make declamatory statements about perceived injustices against Māori.