Natalie KingIn March 2020, I went to Sāmoa to witness the final phase of Yuki’s photoshoot for Paradise Camp. It was my first time in Sāmoa, and it was quite a culture shock for me. Yuki had selected very specific locations for her photographs, including villages, plantations, waterfalls and a fale (house) to tell her story.

There was a cast of close to 100 people, so it was a very elaborate production. Yuki works like a cinematographer, so choosing a location, cast and crew, as well as lighting. The way that she worked was specific and purposeful. And I felt really privileged to be able to watch. It’s always a joy, and quite rare, for a curator. I guess it was like being in a live studio when Yuki was on location, making the work in situ.

I also got to spend time with the Fa‘afafine community. Every night we had dinner with Yuki’s friends. And they told us naughty stories, funny stories, as well as harrowing stories about discrimination and being rejected by family. But also stories of hope, their lavish pageants, and I just absolutely loved being there.

In retrospect, it was a miracle, because it was two weeks before lockdown. So, in fact, if Yuki hadn’t had such a carefully planned Paradise Camp shoot, I don’t know how we would have made the work. But fast forward to now, here we are at the Venice Biennale, presenting Yuki’s work.

There’s been a tremendous response, even though there’s such geographical distance between Sāmoa, the Pacific and Venice. Yuki’s looking at issues that are pertinent—small-island ecologies, environment crises, decolonisation and intersectionality. These are issues that affect all of us, and especially Venice, which is a fragile lagoon, one that is hugely impacted by tourism and by the tides in acqua alta.

Ioana Gordon-SmithI’m Sāmoan but was born and raised in Aotearoa, and so a lot of my experience is within the Pacific Arts community there, which is how I know Yuki in the first place. I don’t remember how we first met, but I’ve worked with her in the past. So we share a cultural background in New Zealand. 

In terms of the limits of shared experience, I think that any discourse around decolonial politics or Indigenous knowledges that doesn’t also incorporate a challenge to heteronormative norms is an incomplete decolonial discourse. These are part of one shared, greater movement to challenge the colonial inheritance of gender, of sexuality, of identity. In terms of supporting someone who has faced different challenges to me, I think, ultimately, you have to be quite mindful of ensuring that someone can speak to their own experience without thrusting expectations upon them of what their varied experiences might be. 

What I really enjoy about the exhibition is that there is a spectrum of stories and characteristics that come through. On the one hand, there is this identification of the histories that continue to impact Fa‘afafine. But on the other hand, you’ve also got this embrace of different personalities, especially, I think, through First Impressions. You’ve got the laughter, the tenderness, the cackling. You’ve got a group of women and Fa‘afafine that Yuki has empowered to represent themselves and share their own first impressions of Paul Gauguin, who stands as a figurehead for the colonial treatment of Pacific peoples.

IGSYuki is a global citizen in the world. We want to acknowledge that, in addition to being a Sāmoan and a Fa‘afafine, she is an international artist. 

NKThat’s how I knew her work, because she had been in a number of Biennales, including Honolulu (2017), Bangkok (2018), the Asia Pacific Triennial (2002 and 2015) and the Sakahàn quinquennial (2013). So even though her work is deeply local, it also has a global resonance.

NKIn November 2019, Yuki, myself and Creative New Zealand made a site visit to select Yuki’s venue. New Zealand has been participating in the Venice Biennale since 2001 and because it doesn’t have a permanent pavilion, the artists can select a venue that is optimum for their work. So we looked at various sites, from palazzos to warehouses, and we felt very strongly that we wanted to be in the Arsenale.

It’s important for Yuki to coexist alongside other artists. And also, look at the throng of people around us. This is where the footfall is, so we wanted to be in the hub of the Arsenale—Creative New Zealand managed the leasing arrangement with La Biennale. We have certainly had huge audiences coming through, and it’s barely day three, so I think the venue was really key, it’s very significant.

The Arsenale is a former artillery factory, and the walls are very high, five metres tall. We wanted to work with the height and the volume. So on the walls, you see two very large wallpapers. One is in Sāmoa, of an oceanscape that was decimated in the 2009 tsunami. And while it might look like paradise and a beach scene, actually it’s a sign of destruction and despair. We worked with a fantastic exhibition designer, Anita Gigi Budai, and Amber Baldock, who’s our exhibition manager. 

We have a really talented team—I know it’s a cliché, but you need a really great team to deliver the Venice Biennale, especially under the conditions that we’ve all been working under for the past two years, with all the complexities of lockdown, travel, freight and customs. But we made it and we’re thrilled!

IGSWe were at dinner a couple of nights ago, and Yuki and I were trying to pick through the international context of New Zealand, Pacific and Māori art, which we both think is quite strong. We were trying to identify why it is so strong, and we came to one thought, which is that we’re quite a small community that works frequently together. 

There are shared, though specific, concerns that we will often discuss as a group, that enrich our own understanding of how history has affected us, as specifically positioned peoples. And if you think about Paradise Camp, it was inspired by Yuki’s 2008 visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which reminded her of a lecture presentation by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, who’s a Māori emeritus scholar.

Another example is the talanoa symposium we’re organising in October, which is titled after a quote from Merata Mita, who is a pioneering Māori filmmaker. So I think that together, across all of these artists, we’re building a rich but nuanced discourse that we can all pull from in order not to start decolonial methods from scratch.

We take that body of knowledge that is shared, and specific to each of us, and then we use that to move forward to a new inquiry or a new body of research. And I suppose I’m bypassing your question, because I’m not saying that Yuki’s work was compared to Lisa’s, or was inspired by Lisa’s. But rather, that they are both emerging from a really rich, intellectual tradition that is, to some extent, rich, because we can share ancestral tension, we can share decolonial methods, and decolonial thinking, and artistic strategies. And through that, we can become quite incisive in the way that we approach visual histories of us, that were made without us. And I think that the other Biennale presentations that have similar Indigenous premises show that the decolonial or the Indigenous really can’t be ignored, but also that there is something about galvanising across solidarity networks, which is why the Firsts Solidarity Network came together. This idea of alternative networks and alternative knowledges that cross over is actually pivotal to amplify all of our voices.

NKTo be honest, we haven’t resolved the configuration for other venues, but there certainly is a wish to have the exhibition evolving, and we’d like very much to work on site. For example, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney have a comprehensive collection of Sāmoan photographs, so Yuki may look into their collection. But we’re still resolving some of those details. The main thing is that we’re thrilled to take Paradise Camp to the Southern Hemisphere, to return it to the Pacific.

NKIt’s a way of rerouting resources.

NKDefinitely. I feel like I’m always collaborating. You’re only as good as your team and I’m not really interested in that authorial, singular, uber-curator model. I think that’s really outdated and patriarchal for me, so I always like to work with others. And I think that we’re seeing more of this kind of methodology—documenta is curated by the collective ruangrupa this year and the individuals are not named. We can think curatorially about how we can collectivise and become a community as a way to amplify voices and work together in a way that’s meaningful. So that’s what’s important to me. Also, the word ‘curator’ comes from the verb curare, which means to take care. So we need to take care of each other, and artists, and ideas, primarily. 

NKSure. And there’s also a lot of trust. I know I can run something by Ioana, and share a text before it’s ready to show anyone else. You’ve got these touchpoints, which is enormously valuable, rather than working in isolation; and hopefully, we offer that to Yuki as well.

NKI feel that this edition of the Biennale is a turning point in terms of putting the spotlight on overlooked or marginalised artists. Moreover, Cecilia Alemani has curated the large exhibition and not only is she the first Italian woman to do it, but—in a refreshing curatorial approach—the Giardini has only women and gender non-conforming artists. I think the pavilions that tell counter stories of resilience and hope—such as Poland with the first Romany artist, Malgorzata Mirga-Tas, Nepal with Tsherin Sherpa, and the UK with Sonia Boyce—are especially resonant in exposing hidden histories. I am very proud to be a curator in this particular Biennale, which is like a symphony rather than a series of solos.

IGSThere are two parts. One is that collections worldwide hold images of Indigenous people, often without our knowledge, and without our ability to access them. And often, you must pay to reproduce them or to use them. So there’s this strange system where visual records of our histories and our people are very opaque. And Yuki, because she has had such an international practice, has been able to go into the archives physically, identify an image, recognise it for what it is, and then use it in her work, surfacing it for a Pacific audience. I’ve really enjoyed that. I didn’t know there were so many images of us in museum collections all over Europe. Just to be able to retrace those is such a foundational step that needs to happen. 

The second thing I like about Yuki’s process is that it’s not often you get to watch the creative spark happen. When you’ll see a photo, and you will see another thing entirely, you’ll be like, “Those look somewhat similar. What’s going on here?” And it appears throughout the publication as well, so she draws comparisons between the molecular structure of coronavirus and hiapo. And that is worlds apart. It’s not often you get to witness that process—to share her visual material is such a fun part, especially for someone who’s not an artist themselves.