Yuki Kihara Celebrates Samoa’s Third Gender

Representing New Zealand at the Venice Biennale, the Samoan-New Zealand artist is foregrounding Samoa’s fa’afafine and transgender communities, and the climate crisis hidden from tourists, Jinghua Qian writes for The Guardian.

Curated by Natalie King, Kihara’s exhibition Paradise Camp comprises 12 tableau photographs that offer a winking response to the paintings of French post-impressionist Paul Gauguin and a wry comment on tourism and the climate crisis.

The exhibition talks back to canon, reframes the archive as a living conversation, and also calls forward the fa’afafine community today to share her platform in Venice. It’s a show that defies the image of the artist as a lone genius, Qian writes.

“It’s really hard to talk about myself without talking about the community I come from that forms my context,” Kihara, 47, says.

Original article by Jinghua Qian, The Guardian, April 28, 2022.

Photo by Yuki Kihara and Milford Galleries.