SĀMOAN HXSTORIES, SCREENS AND INTIMACIES II / HISTOIRES, ÉCRANS ET INTIMITÉS SAMOANS II
Louisa Afoa, DB Amorin, Pelenakeke Brown, Talia Smith, Christopher Ulutupu, Brian Fuata, Isi, Rosanna Raymond
A Space Main Gallery
October 20 – December 11, 2021
Curated by: Léuli Eshrāghi
Proudly presented by A Space Gallery and imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.
Online October 20 - October 24, 2021, iNdigital.imaginenative.org
In Person Gallery hours Tuesday to Friday 11AM to 5PM and Saturday noon to 5PM.
This second chapter of Sāmoan Hxstories, Screens and Intimacies spans 2013-2021. It focuses attention on many of the talented artists working with time, screen, body, knowledge and projection. Louisa Afoa, DB Amorin, Pelenakeke Brown, Talia Smith, Christopher Ulutupu and Brian Fuata’s recent works process the difficulties resulting from colonial displacement and diaspora, as well as the visual and performative languages held within bodies and places that are cherished. Isi offers an ephemeral commission based on meditations on the perenniality of embodied knowledge through arresting the archive of American, German and British documentation of Sāmoan and ‘Uvean cultures, weighted as they are by hierarchies of race, class, power and anthropology. Sāmoan filmmakers and media artists living around the world testify through these works to the complexity of navigating the present colonial order and projecting into sovereign futurities to come.
Biographies
Louisa Afoa (Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland) is a Sāmoan, Pākehā artist and educator, completing a BVA (Honours) in 2016 whose work comments on sociopolitical issues, while giving insight into the lived experiences of the communities she belongs to.
DB Amorin (Lenapehoking/New York) is a Sāmoan/Azorean Portuguese artist from Honolulu. His work addresses audio-visual non-linearity as a container for intersectional experience, often focusing on the role error plays as a generative opportunity.
Pelenakeke Brown (Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland) is a Sāmoan, Pākehā interdisciplinary, independent disabled artist. Her practice spans art, writing, and performance. Returning to Aotearoa from Lenapehoking, she co-founded Rotations.dance.
Talia Smith (Warrang/Sydney) is a Cook Islands, Sāmoan, Pākehā artist and curator whose photographic and video practice examines the outskirts of cities. Her curatorial practice examines notions of time, memory and the ruin.
Christopher Ulutupu (Te Whanganui ā Tara/Wellington) is a Sāmoan, Niuean, German artist working in video and performance to explore landscape and photography in the sconstruction of colonial narratives. He has exhibited widely in Aotearoa and Australia.
Brian Fuata (Meanjin/Brisbane) works in the improvisation of live or mediated performance, writing and objects. He uses multiple registers of persona and public speaking to produce a dumb zone of dramatic affects.
Isi (Si’ahl/Seattle; təqʷúməʔ/Tacoma) creates videos that restore narrative fluidity to linear Western colonial archives of Sāmoan and Uvean ceremonies. Isi developed live performance with Rosanna Raymond’s SaVAge K’lub (Honolulu Biennial 2019).
Sistar S’pacific, aka Rosanna Raymond (Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland), is a long-standing member of the Pacific Sisters, founder of the SaVAge K’lub, and has achieved international renown for her performances, installations, body adornment, and spoken word.
Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi is a Sāmoan, Persian and Cantonese artist, curator and researcher whose practice spans performance, moving image, writing and installation. Their work centres on Indigenous presences and multilinguality.