New Zealand confirms Yuki Kihara’s exhibition for Biennale Arte 2022

Small island ecologies, climate change, queer rights, Gauguin’s gaze, intersectionality and decolonisation: these are just some of the topics explored by award-winning interdisciplinary artist Yuki Kihara for the New Zealand pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (Biennale Arte 2022).

Paradise Camp is Kihara’s politically urgent and creatively astute project curated by Natalie King, and will be exhibited in a central location in the Arsenale. “Eight years in the making, the exhibition explores the ongoing Sāmoa-New Zealand relations from a Fa’afafine (Sāmoa’s “third gender”) perspective,” explains Kihara.

As the first artist from New Zealand to present at the Biennale Arte who is Pasifika, Asian and Fa’afafine, Kihara has a capacious vision for the project and works across archival research, photography, video and socially engaged methods. Shot and filmed on location in Upolu Island, Sāmoa, Paradise Camp features a local cast and crew of over 80 people. In addition, Kihara worked closely with the Fa’afafine community to produce a new body of work that eloquently and provocatively investigates a range of critical issues, including the intertwinements of colonisation, intersectionality and climate catastrophe that impacts her community.

Curator Natalie King says: “Kihara narrates stories of invasion and prejudice and in so doing takes the tempo of our times by unravelling colonial histories linked with gender politics and environmental concerns.”

The 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – opens to the public on 23 April.

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