What is your VVAI? - Talatalanoaga

What is your VVAI? - Talatalanoaga

We warmly invite you to join the artists for their 'What is your VVAI? - Talatalanoaga.' This is a free talanoa session for local Pasifika communities to engage with the materials and processes used to create this exhibition, including the natural pigments, tapa, and mixed media artwork. This is an opportunity discuss the naming of Pasifika and Māori objects in Western institutional spaces, and the lifecycles of Pacific cultural material.

This event is held alongside our latest exhibition What is your VVAI? by Ashleigh Taupaki and Jasmine Tuiā.

‘VVAI’ combines the Māori term for water (wai) with its Samoan equivalent (vai). 'What is your VVAI?' focuses on the lifecycles of Pacific cultural materials connected to place, space, and people. This exhibition focuses on Pacific knowledge and aims to encourage conversation within Pacific communities in Tāmaki Makaurau. This dialogue centres around contemporary ways of nurturing connection to cultural belongings, places, and waters in the Moana. These paradigms recognise the value of Pacific cultures and our everyday family dynamics. This multi-disciplinary approach supports the evolution of talanoa we hold online to become tangible. It encourages discussions between two spaces across waters to be held within a community and prompts a response to the question; 'What is your VVAI?'

This exhibition explores the processes and materials of the contemporary Pacific objects that both artists create. Their collaboration stems from the artists’ 2021 NEO Digital Residency with the Übersee Museum in Bremen, Germany. This programme asked its participants to investigate what it means to name Pacific cultural objects within a museum context. The artists concluded that the context of these cultural objects - including material, place of origin, source method, and methods of making - should be noted and considered before a name is designated. The installations of pigments, rocks, photography, drawings, tapa, and sculpture will draw on the frameworks of Talanoa and Fonofale models we used during the NEO residency.