Ariana Tikao is a musician and writer whose work explores her Kāi Tahu identity, mana wahine, and ancestral kōrero. She was awarded as a 2020 Arts Laureate by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand.

Ariana has three critically acclaimed solo albums, and has worked on many other collaborative music and multi-media projects spanning a 30-year creative career. She specialises in Aotearoa’s indigenous instruments, collectively known as taonga puoro.

Her writing has appeared in Takahē, Turbine|Kapohau, Tupuranga, and Pantograph Punch. She has also contributed poems, chapters, and essays to several books, including the award-winning Bill Hammond: Across the Evening Sky. In 2022, Ariana published her book Mokorua: My Story of Moko Kauae through Auckland University Press, and also completed her MA in Creative Writing through the International Institute of Modern Letters. In 2023 Ariana was an Ursula Bethell writer in residence at the University of Canterbury, where she worked on a collection of poetry inspired by pūrākau attached to local Māori place names in Waitaha.