The Story Behind Koekoeā Studio

Kia ora! I’m Emma.

Artist. Educator. Storyteller. Migrant woman. Mother.

Founder of Koekoeā Studio.

I was born in Aotearoa New Zealand, a place where land, story, relationship and movement are woven into everything. It is a fine entanglement. From early childhood, drawing was how I understood the world — my first language of expression. That love led me to study fine arts and visual communication, and eventually into museum education, where I discovered the beauty of objects as carriers of stories, migrations, and the universal desire for home.

My creative life has always been active and evolving. I am the author of a graphic novel, a long-form visual story that grew out of years of drawing, research, reflection, and lived experience. I’m now deep into my second graphic work — a continuation of my commitment to storytelling through images, voice, and layered narrative. This strand of my life isn’t separate from my teaching; it’s the heartbeat of it. Visual storytelling shapes how I understand learning, empathy, and human connection.

But it wasn’t until I migrated myself — first to Spain, where I lived, worked, loved, and became a mother — that I truly understood what it feels like to rebuild your voice in a new language. I know the disorientation of arriving in a country where you don’t yet have the words you need. I know the tenderness of trying to parent, work, advocate, and live while still learning how to speak. I know what it means to feel disempowered, and what it takes to reclaim your voice as a woman in difficult circumstances.

Teaching became, for me, not just a profession but a form of solidarity. When I began working with immigrant women learning English, something clicked. I recognised their stories in my own. Their hopes, their uncertainties, their courage. I wanted to create a place where women could learn gently, speak bravely, and discover their strength on their own terms.

I have on my bookshelf, the photo of a famous woman of my country, Makareti Papakura, who my great-great grandparents would have known. She was possibly the first inidigenous woman to get a degree from Oxford University. She studied there in the late 1920s when few women were there. She tragically died just weeks before her final examinations. The Master’s degree was posthumously awarded to her only in September 2025 and I had the honour of being able to attend the celebration at Oxford with her whānau. She was a woman who walked in many worlds. She was a migrating bird, a brilliant mind and a woman who broke barriers. Her photo has been in my diary to help me keep moving forward as I also stepped as a (very) mature student, alone into study, fighting many obstacles.

And then, later in my life, I rediscovered something unexpected: movement. Walking long distances. Running in the open air. Being held by nature. These became meditative portals — tiny wormholes back to the girl I used to be, the one who loved movement, imagination, freedom, possibility. Running returned me to her. It reminded me that our younger selves often hold the hope we need to move forward as grown women.

Walking the land, listening to the rhythm of breath and footfall, feeling the world open around me — these experiences have shaped the heart of Koekoeā just as much as my art or my teaching.

Koekoeā is where all these threads come together: migration, creativity, women’s empowerment, language, story, connection, relationship, movement, nature, resilience, and becoming.

It is a space where women can learn without fear, speak without shame, and move toward futures that feel bright, open, and authentically theirs.

Welcome. This is your place to become bravely.

The koekoeā, or kawekaweā as it is also known, is a migratory long tailed cuckoo of Aotearoa New Zealand. It winters in the islands of the Pacific, and then, in spring, it comes back to the shores of my country. When people heard this bird calling, they knew it was time to plant. The shining cuckoo’s call forms part of a well known waiata poi (song accompanied by the swinging of poi):

E rongo koe i te Pīpīwharauroa.
"Kūī, kūī ?
Whitiwhiti ora!"

…or hear the Shining Cuckoo's song
"Cold, short of spiritual food?
May your life change for the better!"

It is also said that these birds bring to the land knowledge of the outside world, as small seeds and pebbles in their beaks.

Some plumage of these birds were given to my great-great grandfather and were passed down through our family for generations. They are for me a symbol of hope and strength, courage and growth.