A gender-bending hit show from the Venice Biennale is set to open at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum.
Yuki Kihara’s show Paradise Camp achieved international acclaim at the 59th Biennale and by the time it finished up in the New Zealand pavilion just over a week ago, it had drawn 485,000 visitors.
The show looks at the notion of paradise from an indigenous and queer perspective and argues that France’s most famous post-impressionists, Paul Gauguin, based some of his Tahiti paintings on scenes that were actually from Samoa.
Kihara is not only the first Pacific Islander to represent New Zealand at the prestigious Biennale, she is also the first fa’afafine artist.
A fa’afafine, or man who lives and dresses as a woman, is one of four culturally recognised gender roles in Samoa, alongside male, female, and fa’afatama.
The brightly coloured photos and videos in Paradise Camp were shot on the beaches and rural villages of Upolu Island, with a local cast and crew of more than 100 people.
The scenes cleverly recreate Gauguin’s paintings from his decade living in Tahiti.
The Frenchman created some of his best-known works during this time, contributing to a romantic picture of the colony as an untouched paradise.
But Kihara has uncovered archival photographs that show the beautiful scenes may have actually been based on people and places in Samoa.
The visual associations between Gauguin and Samoan scenes are striking once she points them out, and it’s even better that her digging in the archives has inspired a whole new body of her own work.
In a pointed and funny video, Kihara questions Gauguin about this appropriation, telling the Frenchman she is familiar with his work, but he has a few questions to answer.
“I couldn’t help noticing that although you never set foot in Samoa, you based several of your paintings and photographs on places in Samoa… you passed the subjects off as Tahitians,” she tells him.
In the mind-bending video both artists are played by Kihara, transformed using silicone prosthetics and costumes.
The Australian version of the show at Powerhouse Ultimo in Sydney will also feature new works made in response to the museum’s Samoan collection.
Yuki Kihara: Paradise Camp opens at Powerhouse Ultimo from March 24, 2023.
AAP travelled with the assistance of Destination NSW.
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