Rākau momori are ancestor figures pressed into the living bark of kōpi trees on Rēkohu. Te Papa's conservators are careful about the word: not carvings but bruisings — wide, shallow indentations whose shoulders are rounded, so a figure reads as a faint darker shadow, never a cut line.

The hosts are alive, so the marks stretch as the trunks grow and are steadily erased. This system takes that condition literally: low contrast, soft edges, one mark per surface, and far more untouched ground than incident. Nothing is framed, because the mark has no frame.