Fuli Pereira

The curator of Auckland Museum’s Pacific and World collections is enamoured of material culture and adornment. Her latest project is a curation of tivaevae for Auckland’s City of Colour Festival

My role at Auckland Museum is about quality community access to, and engagement with, museum collections via exhibitions, online content, publications and in-person visits. I’ve worked at Auckland Museum for 26 years, 18 years as Curator Pacific and the last 11 years as Curator Pacific and World Collections.

There are almost no areas of material culture that I’m not fascinated by. I love adornment for the capsules of identity they are, and textiles for the cultural prestige wrapped up in them. I’m particularly interested in the material culture of atoll communities, how people not only lived but thrived on minute tracts of land with extremely limited flora and fauna, in the middle of the vast ocean for millennia. The ingenuity and resourcefulness of humanity are writ large here.

Recently I’ve been collaborating with Britomart for the City of Colour Festival, to curate a selection of tivaevae that will be exhibited in the precinct’s Pavilion buildings.

Tivaevae are handsewn bed coverings made by women of the Cook Islands. One of the key elements about the value of tivaevae-making is the communal undertaking. Vainetini, women’s sewing groups, are usually centred around an expert tivaevae-maker who designs and cuts the tivaevae pieces and oversees the sewing or embellishment of these elements to be brought together to make up the final tivaevae.

The museum’s collection of tivaevae is lovely, with tivaevae from the early 1900s made up of geometric patterns that aren’t seen or made today, as well as contemporary patterns of carnations and pansies that don’t grow in the islands but here in New Zealand. There are tivaevae made by vainetini, and others designed and cut by mothers to be sewn with their daughters. The stories behind tivaevae are just as significant for me as the beautiful tivaevae themselves.

Tivaevae are gifted at every major event in a person’s life, and are an important expression of women’s creativity in the Cook Islands. They’re treasured heirlooms passed down through families.

For the City of Colour Festival tivaevae exhibition my team selected 14 pieces. It was important for us to include older examples as well as contemporary pieces. The range of techniques is important as well — tivaevae taorei, patchwork quilts, tivaevae manu, applique quilts and a tivaevae tataura, embroidered applique quilt. We also wanted to include full bed quilts as well as cushion covers as great examples of tivaevae. And you really can’t look past tivaevae for the theme of Festival of Colour!

The art of tivaevae is still strong today. New patterns and colour combinations are always being explored. Women take inspiration for patterns and motifs from what is in their surrounding environment, and increasingly what might be a social topic or event of the day.”

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The Art of Tivaevae’ is on display at The Pavilions, Britomart, as part of Heart of the City’s ‘City of Colour Festival’, until May 22.