The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

LISA REI HANA AND THE PASIFIKA DIVAS A Maori dragon story 1995 Six stills from 15 min. colour DVD, sound Collection: The artist The APT 2002 performance, Pasifika Divas, was conceived by Samoan Lisa Taouma and draws on this history of subversive performance to deliberately challenge Polynesian notions of sexuality and gender identity. It brings humour back into the spectacle of conventional dancing by indulging in extravagance, and employing the conventions of fale aitu (Samoan comedy) in order to address pertinent social and political issues experienced by Pacific Islanders in Aotearoa New Zealand. 9 By so doing, it also selectively draws on an important international history of parody and histrionics such as the work of Charles Ludlum and his 'Theatre of the Ridiculous', which operated in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. 10 In Aotearoa New Zealand, performance has also been effectively used to emphasise the corporality of body adornment. For example, Samoan designer Lara Kastelan has created the costume Pele's fire, which shoots fireworks using the body as a launch pad. There is a distinctively Pacific Islander aesthetic in design and wearable art pieces which is bold and uniquely reflective of culture. Perhaps at one point restricted by their parents to wearing the matching skirt and shirt of the puletasi, or the crisply ironed shirt with matching tie, Islanders are seemingly seeking an attire revolution. Shigeyuki Kihara's first award-winning design was a lycra puletasi - clingy, silky and sexy. This Samoan/Japanese artist is continL1ally exploring the interface between fashion, art and social comment. Her 'Dusky Maiden' exhibition proposed for the 2002 L'.Oreal Fashion Awards featured self-portraits that reflect the complexity of her heritage and her experience as a fa'afafine (like a woman). Kihara intended to be hung from a cross like a female Jesus, transformed into a palm maiden, and finally a geisha. She comments, 'whites have their own humour as do blacks, this is our humour ... you've got to get down with the brown'. 11 Similarly body adorners Sofia Tekela-Smith and Niki Hastings-McFall tease out essential elements and practices to present them in newly constructed and ultra-modern forms. 12 Hastings-McFall's patinated silver with gold-lipped pearl shell necklace, for example, audaciously parodies itself through its name, Stuck in traffic 1, from the 'Mag wheels breastplate' series. Tekela-Smith creates internal connections rather than commentaries on external reality. Her delicate pieces and the practices involved in their execution are this artist's way of maintaining a link to her Rotuman upbringing. Tekela-Smith transposes the knotting of natural fibres to plastics; affixing black pearls to each, she threads diridamu seeds into chokers influenced by Christian Dior fashion parades. Constructing coconut and feather armours, Tekela-Smith builds her Island space through the associated thoughts brought by her threading, beading and carvings. Lisa Reihana's Digital Marae and the Pasifika Divas project are two distinct works. However, all of the body adorners, artists and performers, including Reihana, have created their own distinct space from which to mediate the world around them, their heritage, politics and aesthetics. Whether virtual or physical, shared or internalised, these are sites for possible communication, potential subversion, and in the Divas' case, witty provocation. As Taouma, producer of the Divas project says, 'Grrrl power Pacific style at its best'. Maud Page is Associate Curator, Contemporary Pacific Art, at the Queensland Art Gallery. 91