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ʻO le ūa na fua mai Manuʻa

17 January – 18 April 2020
10.00am – 5.00pm AEDT
UNSW Galleries
This event has ended

UNSW Galleries is taking a break from normal operations and will temporarily close to the public from 24 March 2020 until further notice. We are prioritising the health of our staff and community and hope to be open again soon. As we adapt to the COVID-19 health emergency in Australia, we will be supporting our exhibiting artists by sharing projects online and developing new initiatives to connect with audiences.
 
If you would like to get in touch please contact unswgalleries@unsw.edu.au or call +61 2 8936 0888
 
For more details on UNSW’s response to COVID-19, please visit: https://www.covid-19.unsw.edu.au


O le ūa na fua mai Manuʻa brings fresh international perspectives to current endeavours to embody and awaken Indigenous sensual and spoken languages. The exhibition takes its title from a Sāmoan proverb that describes the incoming rain from the Sāmoan island of Manuʻa (currently within the unincorporated territory of the United States of America) and bittersweet or melancholic moments leading to much-needed change. 

This archipelago of Indigenous moving image works moves away from Western thinking of ‘the Pacific’ as an untethered region at the periphery of the action (Australia, Australasia, Asia), from a place somewhere over the horizon from where we find ourselves on Eora Nation shores and where contemporary culture is made in Australia. Instead, Indigenous concepts of relational space-time, kinships and responsibilities spanning the Great Ocean are the frameworks that ground this project. 

Drawing together works that span the intellectual and material territories of Yirrkala to Santiago, from Sydney to Kuujjuaq, ʻO le ūa na fua mai Manuʻa’ invites consideration of chosen genealogies and bloodlines meeting through language, movement, body and kinship. It features works that deepen understandings of complex Indigenous life today: focusing on language, memory, desire and pleasure (including sensitivity/care to queer, trans, feminist and matriarchal forms of belonging and kinship without being prescriptive).

Artists
asinnajaq (Inuk, Montreal), Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini, Oakland), Sebastián Calfuqueo Aliste (Mapuche, Santiago), Mariquita 'Micki' Davis (Chamorro, San Diego), Amrita Hepi (Ngā Puhi/Bundjalung, Melbourne), Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe, Montreal), Faye Mullen (Anishinaabe, Montreal), Shannon Te Ao (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Wellington), Angela Tiatia (Sāmoan, Sydney) and Gutiŋarra Yunupiŋu (Dhuwalandja/barrkuŋu waŋa, Yirrkala)

Curator
Dr Léuli Eshrāghi (Sāmoan, Darwin/Montreal)


WHEN: 17 JANUARY - 18 APRIL 2020
WHERE: UNSW GALLERIES
ADDRESS: CNR OF OXFORD ST & GREENS RD, PADDINGTON NSW 2021
HOURS: TUES TO SAT, 10AM-5PM. CLOSED PUBLIC HOLIDAYS

More information


Image: Caroline Monnet, 'Creatura Dada' 2016. HD video, 3:03mins. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Division, Montreal