LOUISA AFOA, NATASHA MATILA-SMITH AND MOLLY RANGIWAI-MCHALE
‘HEAVENLY CREATURES’
1 MARCH – 7 APRIL, 2018
Louisa Afoa, Untitled , vinyl installation. 2017. Photography by Document Photography.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
In the exhibition Heavenly Creatures, artists Louisa Afoa, Natasha Matila-Smith and Molly Rangiwai-McHale find their agency in the personal and intimate. The artists, each from Aotearoa/New Zealand, don’t claim to speak for everyone, but represent three perspectives amongst the many diverse voices of Indigenous and First Nations people. Their works demonstrate that Indigenous voices are complex and unpredictable in their positions.
Heavenly Creatures, Louisa Afoa, Natasha Matila-Smith and Molly Rangiwai-McHale, installation view, dimensions variable, 2018. Photography by Document Photography.
In her thorough critique of Western paradigms and systems in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999), Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith wrote “The reach of imperialism into ‘our heads’ challenges those who belong to colonized communities to understand how this occurred, partly because we perceive a need to decolonize our minds, to recover ourselves, to claim a space in which to develop a sense of authentic humanity.”
Heavenly Creatures, Louisa Afoa, Natasha Matila-Smith and Molly Rangiwai-McHale, installation view, dimensions variable, 2018. Photography by Document Photography.
Further expanding on this, Bell Hooks wrote “if any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.”. The artists in this show use their work as a platform to communicate and acknowledge the power in their vulnerability.
Drawing upon personal narrative, Louisa Afoa’s work looks at the policing that brown bodies experience in the world — in this particular instance, the large brown body. In a series of GIF like images and contemporary slang, she uses her relationship with makeup and pop culture as a way of re-contextualising existing beauty standards. She does this to feel empowered and also reclaim a femininity that was not afforded to her growing up.
Louisa Afoa, Untitled, moving image 9 mins, 48 secs. 2018. Photography by Document Photography.
Natasha Matila-Smith refuses to address her culture. Not for a denial of that culture, but rather a refusal to perform to a cultural stereotype or satisfy any idea of what is perceived of Indigenous people. In her works, she deals with romantic relationships and intimacy, noting that to be apolitical is, in fact, a deeply political move. Molly Rangiwai-McHale speaks of inherited and internalised trauma. With a background history, known only to the artist, Rangiwai-McHale processes these feelings of tension and discomfort in the work Love & Affection.
Heavenly Creatures, Louisa Afoa, Natasha Matila-Smith and Molly Rangiwai-McHale, installation view, dimensions variable, 2018. Photography by Document Photography.
Ultimately, the artists in this exhibition hope to contribute to an ongoing discussion about bodily and cultural autonomy. Each artist addresses a trauma related to the politics that have historically been linked to their own bodies and by proxy, start a dialogue with other young Indigenous people who might have these same ambitions and anxieties.