Shigeyuki Kihara ‘Vavau – tales from ancient Samoa’ Bartley Nees Gallery 20 July – 14 August 2004
Dramatic, dark and hauntingly beautiful portraits of the artist depicted in various roles from Samoan mythology make up
Shigeyuki Kihara’s first solo exhibition with the Bartley Nees Gallery, opening later this month.
In Vavau – Tales from Ancient Samoa post-modern art meets Pacific folklore to create a unique and compelling body of
work. Following in the footsteps of internationally renowned artists such as Yasumasa Morimura, the Japanese artist who
inserts himself into famous Western painting and America’s Cindy Sherman who portrays herself in a myriad of different
roles, Kihara has looked to her own roots for inspiration
As a fa’afine [the Samoan term for a transgender person] of Samoan and Japanese descent, Kihara blurs the boundaries of
definition in both her life and art practice. Winner of the 2003 Creative New Zealand Emerging Pacific Island Artist
Award, she creates strikingly original art that embraces depiction of one particular cultural history with the
critiquing of another.
Her new photographic works show moments in a specific Samoan folktales or ‘fagono’. Playing homage to her Samoan
heritage through the telling of traditional narrative, she subtly parodies a history of European representation of
Pacific peoples in art, particularly the so-called dusky maiden velvet-painting genre.
‘Where the velvet painters are notorious for portraying Pacific people from the colonial gaze, what I do is re-occupy
that gaze” she says. “I come from a point of view from the insider” (Shigeyuki Kihara, 2004)
The sultry portraits of idealised Polynesian beauties and the infamous velvet paintings by artists such as Charles
McPhee are now prize commodity items in the fashionable retro chic of collectibles and interior design. Yet typically
Kihara uses this to advantage. Seducing the viewer with visual language of staged photography, her works are both ironic
and poignant, for our sultry dusky maiden is no longer. She was once a he, and she re-occupies the ‘gaze’ with awareness
and self-control.
“Shigeyuki Kihara was born to defy categorisation. Her very existence blurs and challenges the organisation of
mainstream thought and practise. What is special about her however is her successful negotiation of the interstices that
could otherwise have rendered her incredible. She has stood uncompromisingly in her own marginalised space, fully
intending the world to come to her.” Jim Vivieaere, 2003
Trained originally in fashion design, Kihara has developed her multi-disciplinary practice to encompass stage
performance (Pasifika Divas), fashion, illustration, design and photography. Her breakthrough came in 2000 when Te Papa
purchased her work Teuanoa’I - Adorn to Excess - a collection of 28 T-shirts displaying altered corporate logos.
This controversial ‘logo-jamming’ targeted large companies who employ large numbers of low paid pacific islanders and
subverted mainstream brands with a pacific twist. Over the last few years Kihara has been exhibiting widely and has most
recently been included in the City Gallery Wellington biennial survey exhibition ‘Prospect’ 2004.
ENDS