Shigeyuki Kihara
"Shigeyuki Kihara's artwork straddles an ambiguous field of binary forces - east/west, original/copy, male/female - and challenges the viewer as being complex and multiple, parody and reality. ‘Who am I, what am I, and what are you?' are questions that will never haunt or torment Kihara. Rather, they provide her with the material for her artwork. The possible answers to these questions are always limited and draw boundaries that Kihara will continue to cross in the expression of her existence." (Jim Vivieaere)[i]
Kihara, born in Samoa to a Samoan mother and Japanese father, immigrated to Aotearoa New Zealand at age of sixteen. She trained in fashion design at Wellington Polytech (now Massey University) and found early success while in her second year of study when ‘Graffiti Dress' (1995) was purchased by Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. Five years later, her series of controversial t shirts which parodied well-known corporate logos entitled ‘Teuanoa‛i - Adorn to Excess' were added to Te Papa's collection. Following legal advice, Te Papa removed three of the 28 T-shirts, which featured logos including ‘The Whorehouse' and ‘KKK' during the exhibition of the works in 2001
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Combining her affinity for fashion design with performance and imagery, Kihara stages provocative scenes that question the authenticity of art works by non-indigenous artists in the Pacific in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For ‘Fa‛a fafine: In a Manner of a Woman' (2005) exhibited at Sherman Galleries in Sydney, Kihara uses her own body to reconstruct the colonial gaze preserved as ‘ethnographic' imagery. She undermines the scheme of Western classifications including gender by portraying both a male and female subject. These works speak of Kihara's own identity and status as a Samoan and as a fa‛a fafine. Fa‛a fafine, understood as the ‘third gender' in Western interpretation, are an accepted part of the Samoan social fabric. By taking ownership of the image, Kihara challenges orientalist clichés composed in colonial photographs of Samoans.
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Her solo production and performance work entitled ‘Taualuga; The Last Dance' is based on the taualuga a dance traditionally performed by the eldest son or daughter of a high chief in Samoan culture to mark the celebration of the village community. Kihara utilizes the principles of the taualuga as a metaphor and form of storytelling to revisit the past, seeking history and meaning in approach of an unknown future. ‘Taualuga; The Last Dance' is built upon a narrative inspired by the collections of archival photography dating back to 19th century during the height of Samoa's colonization. The performance is loosely based on Oscar Wilde's interpretation of Salome's ‘Dance of the seven veils'. Kihara's dance becomes the last siva(dance) as Salome takes on the persona of a 19th century Samoan woman in a black Victorian mourning dress. ‘Taualuga; the last dance' has been performed at the 4th Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Australia; Haus der kulteren der welt, Berlin; Musee du Quai Branly, Paris; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.[ii]
Also a freelance curator, Kihara co-curated ‘Hand in Hand' (2008) with Jenny Fraser. ‘Hand in Hand' presented various art forms and mediums to challenge dominant ideas about gender and sexuality in an intercultural exhibition of 17 Indigenous artists from the Pacific and Australia. The exhibition was staged at Performance Space and Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative in Sydney and toured University of Tasmania Plimsoll Gallery, Australia.
In 2008/9, Shigeyuki Kihara had her first solo museum exhibition in North America held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York entitled ‘Shigeyuki Kihara; Living Photographs', a early survey of her early works, following the acquisition of two photographs from the ‘Fa‛a fafine: In a Manner of a Woman' series 2005.
Kihara's work can be found in the public collections of ; Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand; Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; Gus Fisher Gallery University of Auckland, New Zealand; Massey University, New Zealand; Waikato Museum of Art and History, New Zealand; Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney Australia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Australia; Tjibaou Cultural Centre, New Caledonia; University of Cambridge Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, U.K. and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Shigeyuki Kihara was selected one of five ‘path breaking artists' by ArtAsiaPacific's 2009 Almanac (NYC) alongside Mike Parr, NS Harsha, Kimsooja and Huang Yong Ping.
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'Taualuga; The last Dance' 2006 Stills from Performance DVD, Shigeyuki Kihara, Courtesy of Shigeyuki |
[i] Jim Vivieaere, ‘Fa‘a fafine; In a Manner of a Woman' Catalogue, 2005 Sherman Galleries, Sydney.
[ii] See Nina Tonga, Tautai Newsletter, September 2008)Shigeyuki Kihara (b.1975) explores themes of identity, indigenous Moana/Pacific spirituality, consumerism and cross cultural encounter in her multidisciplinary works. Seeking visual materials and references from such disparate sources as museum archives through to popular culture, Kihara investigates notions of representation through interpretation of her own image in a variety of guises. In Sina and her Eel (2003) the artist is transposed into a legend from Samoa. The dark, purple-lit photograph references the kitsch genre of velvet painting and the history of colonial representation of Pacific subjects in modern art.