Pacific Sisters are set to celebrate the last weekend of SCAPE Public Art and the final days of Te Pū o Te Wheke with a very special Fiafia PIKNIK 2023 event in central Christchurch.
Kicking off on Saturday, January 28th, from 10 am–4 pm at the Kate Sheppard Reserve, 159 Oxford Terrace, you are invited to bring a PIKNIK, a rug and come dressed in your best frock while enjoying live music, performance, taonga puoro, and poetry, including local artist Mahmah Timoteo, poet Daisy Speaks and up-and-coming musicians Twin Harmony, before ending the day with Pacific Sisters signature free-style frock action where the public is invited to show off their styles on the catwalk.
Along with the wide range of acts, Pacific Sisters will provide a range of making workshops, sharing new skills and knowledge, in partnership with Tagata Moana Trust and Moana Vā, with whom their values align closely. Both are local organisations championing youth and queer communities, creating future-looking programmes specifically targeted towards evolving health, education and wellbeing.
Established in the early 90s, Pacific Sisters is one of Aotearoa’s longest-established Tangata Moana art collectives, and certainly the most long-term fabulous. Emerging from the fringes of mainstream arts and culture, the Pacific Sisters are now recognised locally and internationally for their multi-disciplinary practice and fashion activism.
First exhibited at the Hawai’i Triennial in 2022, Te Pū o te Wheke honours the Pacific Sisters’ long-standing and ongoing explorations to amplify Pacific bodies, stories, gender fluidity, garments, and expressions.
The installation comprises eight full-body portraits produced in close collaboration with photographer Pati Tyrell. Each image, presented as a lightbox and activated through augmented reality co-developed with iSPARX, depicts a NIU AITU (ancestor) and addresses the foundational question, ‘Who are you?’. The AR component is activated through the new Pacific Sisters app, which is the partner to the eight photographs, taking you to virtual portraits cast in a semi-circle layout.
The Sisters’ Te Pū o te Wheke opened on November 5th in Ōtautahi Christchurch, as part of the SCAPE Public Arts Festival Season 22 and runs until January 30th, 2023. Eight individual photographs of NIU AITU (ancestors) are installed back-to-back in four lightboxes outside Te Pae Convention Centre on Oxford Terrace.
For more information, head to Christchurch’s website here!
