The Pacific Sisters is an artist collective based in Auckland combining costume, fashion, performance, dance and filmmaking in their work, which is rooted in Māori, Pacific, and Queer identities. This year, as part of the Biennale of Sydney ‘Ten Thousand Suns’, their work is on display at the Art Gallery of NSW from 9 March to 10 June.
The Pacific Sisters is a Tāgata Moana art collective that emerged from the fringes of mainstream arts and culture in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1991. Members are: Lisa Reihana, Rosanna Raymond, Ani O’Neill, Suzanne Tamaki, Selina Haami, Niwhai Tupaea, Henzart @ Henry Ah-Foo Taripo, Feeonaa Wall, and Jaunnie ‘Ilolahia.
Pacific Sisters advocate for the environment, Indigenous, POC and Queer rights and body sovereignty. The collective is an active and influential part of the wider Moana arts community, nurturing and mentoring younger artists, as well as inspiring and supporting each other’s individual art practices.
Text from the catalogue of ‘Ten thousand suns’ 24th Biennale of Sydney:
Fashion designers, performers, filmmakers, and dancers, the mana wahine (women of strength) who comprise the Pacific Sisters collective, founded in Auckland in 1992, have embraced Māori, Pacific, and Queer identities to weave Moana-based customary art and cultural practices into contemporary art.
Renowned for their ‘Koupapa (philosophical) driven Frock’ ethos, which envisions clothing less as adornment than as a statement of power, each Pacific Sister work has a unique story.
Mururoa, named for one of the sites of the French nuclear tests conducted from 1966 to 1996, guards what is left of a post-nuclear world, protecting motu (lands), moana (oceans) and, ultimately, tagata (people).
Sup’ia Suga, believer in pono (honesty), manaaki-tanga (being kind and generous), and ataahuatanga (being supa-fabulous), is described as ‘part Wonder Woman’ and part Superman, and all girl power’. Encouraging each of us to take responsibility for our own actions, Sup’ia Suga is here to save the day.
Tapu Tinana embodies Nephi Tupaea’s personal journey back to her whānau (family group), and Kaitiaki with a K wears an obsidian-like videotape cloak in lieu of natural, more traditional fibres. An obsolete material, the videotape ripples as if alive, reminding us that which is new is not without history.
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from a grant from Open Society Foundations, generous assistance from Creative New Zealand, assistance from James Roth and Susan Sue Acret and assistance from the Chartwell Charitable Trust.
About the Biennale of Sydney
About the Pacific Sisters
