Two photographic works by Auckland artist Shigeyuki Kihara have been picked up by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to join their permanent collection.

The works come from Kihara's Fa'a fafine: In a manner of a woman series, first shown in Sydney in 2005.

Kihara uses photography and a team of technical assistants to transform herself into different personas drawn from Samoan cultural traditions, colonial fantasies of South Seas Belles and her own imagination.The two works purchased by The Metropolitan Museum are - Fa'a fafine: In a manner of a woman' 2005 - triptych 1/3 (pictured) and My Samoan Girl 2005.

As well as being a visual artist, designer, and curator, Kihara is also a performance artist.

The purchase came about after Dr. Virginia-Lee Webb from the Metropolitan Museum saw a performance by Kihara at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris last July.

"Kihara performed Taualuga: the last dance. The intensity, beauty, and emotional power of this work is significant," recalls Dr Webb.

The Fa'a fafine: In a manner of a woman series was originally presented as a solo exhibition at Sherman Galleries, Sydney in 2005. The following year, it was exhibited at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), also in Sydney.

The photographic works were then selected to be part of the Pasifika Styles exhibition - currently showing at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in the UK.

Dr. Webb explains the attraction of Kihara's work: "I have followed and admired Shigeyuki Kihara's work for several years. The creativity that Kihara brings to her work is exemplified by an astute synthesis of performance, multiple media, historical images, art history and contemporary art practice".

Kihara's work is arguably the first work by a New Zealand Pacific artist to be added to the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collections hold over two million works of art.

Kihara, of Japanese and Samoan parentage, came to New Zealand in 1989. She studied fashion design at Massey University, Wellington.

In her second year, her award-winning 'Graffiti Dress' 1995, was purchased by New Zealand's National Museum Te Papa Tongarewa, which also acquired a line of 28 ready-to-wear T-shirts from her first exhibition, 'Teuanoa'i: Adorn to Excess' in 2001.

Kihara was the recipient of the Emerging Pacific Artist Award from Creative New Zealand, the Arts Council of New Zealand, in 2003.

Shigeyuki Kihara's work is a unique brand of contemporary art - firmly grounded in her Samoan and South Pacific identity and now ready to face the world.

Image: 'Fa'a fafine: In a manner of a woman' 2005 (triptych 1/3)
Shigeyuki Kihara
Photography and mixed media
Courtesy of Shigeyuki Kihara and Sherman Galleries, Sydney

15/01/08