Wāhine – Te Waihorotiu Station

Auckland CBD, Auckland, New Zealand

Public art

✓

Current

Checked by Project Big Things · Aug 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

A 3.7-metre bronze figure performing a karanga at the Te Waihorotiu Station precinct.

Private to your Passport.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

No recommended arrival yet

We have not checked a recommended place to arrive or stop here yet.

This takes you to the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Wāhine – Te Waihorotiu Station

This pin marks the Big Thing itself. If stopping, choose a safe and legal place nearby.

Site-level location · 36.8488° S, 174.7633° E

FIELD GUIDE

The story

She is 3.7 metres of bronze, mid-karanga, and she is calling to people coming up out of the ground.

Wāhine was unveiled by Auckland Council on 29 July 2026 at Te Waihorotiu Station, and the placement is the entire idea. Te Waihorotiu is the new midtown station on the City Rail Link – New Zealand's largest ever transport project, a pair of 3.45-kilometre tunnels running up to 42 metres beneath the Auckland CBD – and it is predicted to become the busiest railway station in the country. Its single island platform sits fifteen metres underground.

A karanga is the call that welcomes visitors onto a marae, made by women, and it is the first thing that happens when people arrive. Siting a monumental figure performing one at the point where passengers emerge from a tunnel is precise rather than decorative: the artwork is doing at the station exactly what the call does at the gateway.

It is by Katz Maihi and Beronia Scott, and it does not stand alone. Horotiu, a 7.2-metre spiralling bronze tuna kūwharuwharu – a longfin eel – accompanies it, and at the Wellesley Street entrance hanging rods mimic the flow of the Waihorotiu Stream and of people through the station, with a kaitiaki carving by mana whenua nominated artists watching over it.

The stream matters. Waihorotiu ran down what is now Queen Street before it was culverted, and the station is named for it. A station built along a buried waterway, welcoming people with a call and guarded by an eel, is a coherent piece of thinking rather than art applied afterwards.

Add a photo

PRACTICAL

Plan your stop

WHAT TO EXPECT

Auckland Council unveiled Wāhine on 29 July 2026 as a major public artwork by Katz Maihi and Beronia Scott. It is deliberately scaled and oriented to welcome passengers emerging from the station.

ACCESS

Wāhine stands at street level immediately outside Te Waihorotiu Station's western Victoria Street West exit, at the corner with Albert Street -- the exit with escalators and a lift up from the concourse. Horotiu, the paired sculpture, stands about 165m further east along Victoria Street West, near the Queen Street corner.

COMMUNITY

Visitor Log

WHAT'S NEXT

Find another Big Thing nearby

✓

Current

Wētā Cave Giant Trolls and Dragon – Auckland

Auckland CBD, Auckland

Giant trolls and a sleeping dragon form the signature larger-than-life entrance experience at Wētā Cave Auckland.

Characters and mascots

0.1 km away

✓ Recommended arrival recorded

TRANSPARENCY

Sources & research

OurAuckland – Horotiu and Wāhine unveiled

Auckland Council · recorded 2026-08-23

Official Auckland Council launch record.

Government

WQ TMA – City Rail Link artworks

WQ TMA · recorded 2026-08-23

Current precinct information gives Wāhine height as 3.7m.

Other

What we're still checking

Open-licence image search completed 24 August 2026. No defensible reusable image with file-level commercial-use provenance was verified in the completed Commons, government/open-licence and archival/open-collection sweep.

Something not right?

If this Big Thing has changed, moved or gone, telling us keeps the guide honest for the next traveller.

Suggest an update →Report a problem →