Sāmoan Hxstories, Screens, and Intimacies II (Histoires, Écrans, Et Intimités Samoans II)

Sāmoan Hxstories, Screens, and Intimacies II spans 2013 – 2021, focusing attention on artists Christopher Ulutupu, DB Amorin, Isi, Louisa Afoa, Pelenakeke Brown, and Talia Smith whose works process colonial displacement and diaspora as well as embodied visual and performative languages. These artists attest to the complexity of navigating the present capitalist order and projecting into sovereign futurities beyond the hierarchies of race, class, power, and anthropology.

Curator: Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi (Sāmoan/Persian/Cantonese)

Aritists: Christopher Ulutupu (Sāmoan/Niuean/German) | DB Amorin (Sāmoan/Azorean Portuguese) | Brian Fuata (Sāmoan | Isi (Sāmoan/Uvean)| Louisa Afoa (Sāmoan/Pākehā) | Pelenakeke Brown (Sāmoan/Pākehā) | Talia Smith (Cook Island/Sāmoan/Pākehā)

A Space Gallery
October 19, 2021 – December 11, 2021

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 construction 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).