Description
Interdisciplinary artist Yuki Kihara’s work interrogates and dismantles gender roles, (mis)representation, and colonial legacies in the Pacific. Kihara is the first Pasifika and first Fa’afafine artist to be presented by New Zealand at the prestigious 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, with a groundbreaking exhibition of new work that addresses some of the most pressing issues of our time.
For this companion publication to the exhibition, editor Natalie King has commissioned contributors from around the world to explore the interwoven strands running through Kihara’s art: race, gender, place, decolonisation, environment, agency, community. The book contextualises Kihara’s lifetime of works, which camp, expose, queer and question dominant narratives, turning so-called history on its head.
The book contains contributions from Tahiti to Aotearoa. High-profile contributors include New York-based Cuban artist, scholar and activist Coco Fusco, Tahitian author Chantal Spitz, Filipino curator and professor Patrick Flores, and Australian arts leader Natalie King OAM (who edited the book).
Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist living and working on Upolu Island, Samoa. Since her solo acquisitive exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2008, Kihara has exhibited extensively. Her work has been presented at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels; and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and included in the Asia Pacific Triennial, Daegu Photo Biennale, Sakahàn quinquennial, Honolulu Biennial, Bangkok Art Biennale and Biennale Arte 2022. Her work is held in major collections, including at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, British Museum, Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art, and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Kihara is a research fellow at the National Museum of World Cultures in the Netherlands.
Natalie King OAM (editor) is an Australian curator, editor and arts leader. She is an Enterprise Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Melbourne. In 2017, she curated Tracey Moffatt: My Horizon, Australian Pavilion at the 57th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, accompanied by a publication that she edited with Thames & Hudson. She has curated exhibitions for the Singapore Art Museum; National Museum of Art, Osaka; Tokyo Photographic Art Museum; National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, among others.
King is widely published in arts media, including Flash Art International, Art + Australia, Ocula, and e-flux and Phaidon publications. She is the editor of the Mini Monographs series, published by Thames & Hudson. She is president of AICA Australia (International Association of Art Critics, Paris); a member of CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) and the Metro Tunnel Arts Advisory Panel, Melbourne; and a mentor for Mentor Walks. In the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours, King was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for 'service to the contemporary visual arts'.
