Tufala Meri, Tufala Meri Blo Tiu (still), 2018. Installation view. Photo: Elias Rodriguez
Jasmine Togo-Brisby, Post-Plantation Heir Series, 2018
Dulcie Stewart, Flora Vitiensis: Tekiteki Edition, 2018. Courtesy of the artist. Installation view. Photo: Elias Rodriguez
Salote Tawale, Polite Disguise (still), 2018. Installation view. Photo: Elias Rodriguez
Luisa Tora, Marama Dina Redux (still), 2018. Installation view. Photo: Elias Rodriguez
Installation view. Photo: Elias Rodriguez
Jasmine Togo-Brisby, Post-Plantation, 2017.
WANTOK brings together Melanesian artists who consider aspects of culture, identity, and tradition through exploring relationships to hair.
In many Pacific cultures, the head and hair are considered sacred and infused with spiritual and symbolic meaning. Various events mark rites of passage through hair, such as marriage, mourning, and coming-of-age. Young women of the Lau group in Fiji wore virgin locks until they married, chiefly Fijian men cut their hair during a mourning period, and in parts of the Solomon Islands, teenage boys undergo a haircutting ceremony to signify their transition to manhood.
WANTOK invites the artists to untangle what hair means ti them. It also asks them to unpack what it means to be a Melanesian woman in the diaspora. What emerges is a conversation about bodily integrity, mana, and decolonial self-love expressed in photography, moving image, installation, and performance.
The artists included in WANTOK are Dulcie Stewart (Fiji, Australia), Jasmine Togo-Brisby (Vanuatu, Australia, and New Zealand), Luisa Tora (Fiji, New Zealand, Salote Tawale (Fiji, Australia), and Tufala Meri (Reina and Molana Sutton, Solomon Islands. New Zealand).