Fa’afafine artist breaks new ground
Groundbreaking fa’afafine artist Yuki Kihara will represent New Zealand at the world’s most prestigious arts festival. She talks firsts, quarantine and the creative process with Andre Chumko.
Somewhere in Ta¯ maki Makaurau Yuki Kihara sits in a hotel room while wrapped in a red shawl and takes a sip of tea. It’s yet another impromptu lockdown for the Auckland region, and the wi-fi is struggling to co-operate with Zoom.
Kihara is New Zealand’s representative at the 59th Venice Biennale, a prestigious event colloquially referred to as the Olympics of the art world. Kihara is the first Pacific, Asian, fa’afafine and transgender artist Aotearoa has selected to show since the country has participated in the international contemporary art exhibition.
She still remembers the surprise after getting the formal invite to exhibit from Creative New Zealand. The news was broken to her in a video chat with former Arts Council chair Michael Moynahan.
‘‘I graciously said ‘yes’. And then I switched off the Zoom screen and I screamed,’’ she says.
‘‘My mum ran into the room and said, ‘What the heck is going on? Why are you screaming?’ I was like, ‘Mum, mum, I’m going to Venice!’ She was like, ‘Where’s Venice?’ I had to bring it up on a Google Maps and show her.’’
Born the eldest of three in Sa¯moa to a Japanese father and Sa¯moan mother, Kihara is trilingual (English, Sa¯ moan, Japanese) and first came to Aotearoa in 1989, where she studied at boarding school at St Patrick’s College Silverstream in Upper Hutt before heading to fashion school at Wellington Polytechnic (now Massey University).
She didn’t even want to study fashion, but her parents told her there wasn’t any point going to art school as there was no money to be made there. ‘‘Wellington Polytechnic was really about training students to be industry-ready... I was much more concerned with treating fabric as a sculptural material.’’
Many designers Kihara was drawn to during her studies – John Galliano, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo – were ‘‘more about ideas’’ than following trends or fashion seasons. ‘‘Their works were very theatrical, but equally very sculptural. That’s the direction I wanted to gear my career.’’
But after graduating, the ‘‘conservative’’ Kiwi fashion scene didn’t particularly lend itself to avant-garde flair. As a result, Kihara ended up finding work in wardrobe management and costume design for film and television.
The 46-year-old has dabbled in other creative areas: performing arts, presenting, interning as a hairdresser, guest editing a fashion magazine and creating a T-shirt line. In the early 2000s, video and photography captured her attention. ‘‘All that experience informs the kind of work I make now.’’
More recently, Kihara exhibited a series of siapo kimono sculptures at Porirua’s Pa¯ taka Art Museum, which she says perhaps marked a 360-degree turn back to her roots in fashion.
But her art form knowledge breadth is wider and beyond any one specific discipline. Kihara says the idea drives the medium. And the idea is reliant on research and methodology – she’s a particular fan of digging through archives, reading and interviewing subject experts.
Themes are a different matter. As well as challenging norms of gender and sexuality, Kihara continues to explore body politics and cultural stereotypes. She says there’s a lot of ‘‘baggage’’ to unpack in conversations about bodies: how individuals and others perceive bodies, how bodies are shaped by environments, body autonomy, image and acceptance, clothing as an extension of the body.
‘‘When we talk about authenticity, I’m interested in politics of representation. Who gets to decide what’s authentic? Who has ownership over what ‘authentic’ means? Often those conversations can be controversial, depending on who you’re talking to.’’
For Kihara, authenticity means what is true to her and her experience.
‘‘I find the more that I’m honest to myself, it gives licence for other people to do the same. Which is interesting, that that’s the indirect impact on the audience. The more I confront myself with these issues that I grapple with, the more people find themselves within the answers of my specific experience.’’
‘‘I’m interested in politics of representation. Who gets to decide what’s authentic? Who has ownership over what ‘authentic’ means? Often those conversations can be controversial, depending on who you’re talking to.’’ Yuki Kihara
She says while people see her being selected for Venice as ‘‘groundbreaking’’, she doesn’t want her participation to be a blip in history. ‘‘This is a chance for me to shatter the glass ceiling and to open the door wide open, to usher in many others that haven’t had the opportunity to show their work in this context.’’
Since 2009, Kihara has primarily been based in Sa¯ moa, but she travels back to New Zealand frequently, having family and a Dunedin-based gallerist here. She’s gone through managed isolation several times – ‘‘you can call me a queen of quarantine’’.
Kihara admits she was disillusioned about the process of submitting another Biennale proposal, having started two previous ones which fell through due to the amount of information required by Creative New Zealand. ‘‘I haven’t even made the work, and they’re asking me for freight costs.’’
Approached by Melbournebased curator Natalie King about giving it a third go, Kihara says she originally said no. ‘‘I was just so jaded.’’ But King persisted, and as Kihara pretty much had a concept ready, the pair eventually cracked on and managed to get the proposal in on time.
The reactions have been overwhelming since she was announced as New Zealand’s representative – hundreds shared the news on social media, and she still gets approached privately by people expressing their congratulations at her choosing.
‘‘I guess I symbolically stand for many people – I symbolically stand for something.’’
She won’t let on about what to expect to see in Italy, but does say the majority of the work has already been made, and has been for some time – something she credits in part due to her early announcement as Aotearoa’s exhibitor. She’s also chosen a venue, but couldn’t say what that was, either.
Internationally, Kihara says there’s been a recent ‘‘reconciling’’ with indigenous, queer and feminist politics – issues which converge in her work. Whatever she plans to show, she promises it will be something topical, current and ‘‘glocal’’ (global and local).
‘‘I’m primarily driven by my curiosity. I have many unanswered questions about the world. The art becomes a way for me to help anchor my thoughts so that I’m able to see the world for what it is. It’s my quest for truth.’’