Performance by Yuki Kihara
At the Den
348 Karangahape Rd, Auckland
This project attempts to redress and contribute an alternative form of art methodology towards discussions on Pacific Island erotica,Performance by Yuki Kihara
At the Den
348 Karangahape Rd, Auckland
This project attempts to redress and contribute an alternative form of art methodology towards discussions on Pacific Island erotica,heterosexuality, Transexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and the historical interpretations from non-Pacific Island societies.
August 30 to end September 2003 (opening Sat 30, 6.30-8.30)
At the Den
348 Karangahape Rd, Auckland
Artist involved: Andy Leleisi`uao, Shigeyuki Kihara, Nicholas Netzler, and John Ioane.
Project concept and background: 'Sexuality - stolen from nature abstracted by fiction'.
The Cartesian translation of male and female belongs to the language and culture of dichotomy, the fiction of modern man. Preceding the creation of man-made law or construct, the nature of life was to grow, progress, and evolve towards its fulfillment, towards ever-fuller realization of its own unbounded holistic divinity and infinity. These qualities still remain the domain of our ancient societies embossed silent in our children, dressed in modernity.
The idea to have an installation in a sex shop regarding these particular issues came from an understanding that seeing from a face-to-face relationship rather than from a distance (Art Gallery box) is the primary source of any real knowledge.
'We carry our bodies as markers of difference and reminders of the endlessly recycled colonial fantasies on which Western culture thrived'.
This Western institutionalized fiction invested in the exotic other seems a blessing in disguise for Pasifika!
As a collective we wish to elevate an understanding that to become free, one needs limitations. Surrounding oneself with limitations attains the profound significance of personal freedom to a free spirit, and determines what ones duty and role is in life.
The artists involved in this KRd Project possess a unique world view and experience to this biological need (sexuality), and as a collective, their voice will interpret a personal reality to 'gender' and 'sexuality' as a passage rather than a path to the other story.
We attempt to transcend seduction into an obvious de-constructive show, by just being us!
We hope that this innovation, and our social obligation as cultural/ social commentators with the gift of creative means, will shed light on the Pacific island panel that the vision of our body is only an apparent surface marker, and symbolic language of an underlying, more real, divine order.
In-house catalogue reviewers/mentors: Jim Vivieare Curator/artist, and Ron Brownson Senior Curator Auckland Art Gallery NZ.
Co-curators: Andy Leleisi`uao andJohn Ioane.
Creative New Zealand funded project for 2003.
Pacific Islands arts development funding programme. 2002-2003.
Andy Leleisi`uao, Shigeyuki Kihara and John Ioane are represented by Deborah White of Whitespace
www.whitespace.co.nz