‘‘Queen Victoria’’, Jeremy Leatinu’u
(Dunedin Public Art Gallery Rear Window)
ALTHOUGH performed and documented in 2013, the video work Queen Victoria by Auckland artist Jeremy Leatinu’u is both prescient, and resonant with the recent and ongoing attempts by activists and artists to confront the sculptural memorialisation of colonisers and capitalists (especially those associated with colonisation and slavery). In the video documented performance Queen Victoria, Leatinu’u, who is of Samoan and Maori descent, is filmed sitting on top of a ladder in front of civic statues of Queen Victoria. Leatinu’u performs this quiet act of confrontation in front of four statues in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, and Auckland, which are presented simultaneously in four equal sections of the screen.
The ladder Leatinu’u sits on is mediumsize, which means he is still forced to look upwards at Queen Victoria’s face, and as a Pakeha I cannot know what it feels like to undertake this action, but I am provoked to begin to imagine, and to question the differential impact and effect of these statues. To imagine and question are themselves prompts to hold in one’s consciousness the ongoing effects of events such as colonisation in this and other countries, and of Black Lives Matter activism. Leatinu’u’s performance and video ask Pakeha, in particular, to evaluate the presence of these colonial signifiers who loom large in public spaces that are theoretically open and welcoming to all. Perhaps Leatinu’u’s work invites us to reimagine public space as inclusive, even reparative.