\nas my brother's face
disappeared beneath us
\nbeneath the ship which carried us and the goddess
\nto where we do no know
\nleaving the war of my grandfather
\nthe smell of smoke following us.\"{{Cite news|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/89738|title=The Doors of the Sea|access-date=2016-10-14}}"}},"i":0}}]}" id="mwTg">
"the blood red dust of life
as my brother's face
disappeared beneath us
beneath the ship which carried us and the goddess
to where we do no know
leaving the war of my grandfatherthe smell of smoke following us." [12]
Before the publication of Coconut Milk, McMullin had already been widely published, and their solo collections included a poetry chapbook, A Drag Queen Named Pipi (2004) from Tinfish Press and a children's book My Name is Laloifi (2005). [1]
McMullin began making visual art around 2004 while living in Apia Samoa. Around 2011 or slightly earlier, they began to explore the concept of the cultural appropriation of Samoan art and culture, or Tiki Kitsch as it is sometimes called. Much of their work since that time has been influenced by this shift. [13] In a 2012 artist statement McMullin writes:
"...looking at kitsch art has made me question all my assumptions about the Samoan artistic practice, and to search for alternative meaning in our conceptions of the traditional, realizing that my work relied on appropriated meanings and visual misinterpretations or a dumbing down of meaning. So i began making abstract paintings influenced by Samoan siapo and weaving. As well as the intellectual lives of the many indigenous and women and fa'afafine/whakawahine artists who inspired me." [13]
In addition to painting, McMullin also does a significant amount of work in sculpture, collage, installation and photography. McMullin's work has been featured in over a dozen solo exhibits – including installations at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe (2021) and at the Honolulu Museum of Art for the Hawai'i Triennial (2022) – and in over 50 group exhibitions across the United States. [1]
In a 2010 interview as artist in residence at de Young, McMullin discussed the physical make up of their works, as well as how the many media in which they work organically influence each other:
"In the past year or so, I've been working in various media for sculptures and installations, including plaster, red earth, plant fibers, altered furniture, oil paint, resin, and cloth. The sculptures in turn are influencing my paintings, which was once almost all realistic in its approach, but through the influence of my sculpture, I'm now incorporating abstract shapes." [14]
Of McMullin's many short films Sinalela (2001) and 100 Tikis (2016) received the most acclaim, and have shown at film festivals and museums internationally including in French Polynesia, France, Australia and New Zealand. [1] Sinalela was filmed on a hand held camera in Samoa, and draws on the fairy tale Cinderella as well as a Samoan proverbial tale (a fa'agogo). 100 Tikis, an indigenous appropriation art film, has shown at the Museum of Modern Art with Sinalela, as well as internationally.
Source [1]
Māhū in Native Hawaiian and Tahitian cultures are third gender people with traditional spiritual and social roles within the culture, similar to Tongan fakaleiti and Samoan fa'afafine. Historically, the term māhū referred to people assigned male at birth (AMAB), but in modern usage, māhū can refer to a variety of genders and sexual orientations.
Faʻafafine are natal males who align with a third gender or gender role in Samoa. Fa'afafine are not assigned the role at birth, nor raised as girls due to a lack of daughters, as is often claimed in western media. Rather, their femininity emerges in early childhood, and Samoans recognize them as distinct from typical boys.
Donna Tusiata Avia is a New Zealand poet and children's author. She has been recognised for her work through receiving a 2020 Queen's Birthday Honour and in 2021 her collection The Savage Coloniser won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The Savage Coloniser and her previous work Wild Dogs Under My Skirt have been turned into live stage plays presented in a number of locations.
Samoan literature can be divided into oral and written literatures, in the Samoan language and in English or English translation, and is from the Samoa Islands of independent Samoa and American Samoa, and Samoan writers in diaspora. Samoan as a written language emerged after 1830 when Tahitian and English missionaries from the London Missionary Society, working with Samoan chiefly orators, developed a Latin script–based Samoan written language. Before this, there were logologo and tatau but no phonetic written form.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) people in American Samoa face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents. Same-sex sexual activity became legal in the territory in 1980, but same-sex couples may not marry. Same-sex couples married legally in other jurisdictions are recognized and must be treated equally under US federal law since 13 December 2022. American Samoa remains the only part of the United States along with select Native American tribal jurisdictions to enforce a ban on same-sex couples marrying.
Shigeyuki "Yuki" Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist of Japanese and Samoan descent. In 2008, her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; it was the first time a New Zealander and the first time a Pacific Islander had a solo show at the institution. Titled Shigeyuki Kihara: Living Photographs, the exhibition opened from 7 October 2008 to 1 February 2009. Kihara's self-portrait photographs in the exhibitions included nudes in poses that portrayed colonial images of Polynesian people as sexual objects. Her exhibition was followed by an acquisition of Kihara's work for the museum's collection.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Samoa face legal challenges not faced by non-LGBT residents. Sexual contact between men is illegal, punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment, but the law is not enforced.
Lonnie Hutchinson is a New Zealand artist of Māori, Samoan and European descent. In 2024 Hutchinson was awarded the My ART Visual Arts Award, making an Arts Foundation Laureate.
Greg Semu is a New Zealand-born photographic artist of Samoan descent. In 1995 his exhibition O le Tatau Samona / The Tatoo Arts of Samoa was the first solo exhibition by a Samoan heritage photographer at Auckland Art Gallery.
Rosanna Marie Raymond is a New Zealand artist, poet, and cultural commentator and Raymond was recognised for "Pasifika artists practicing contemporary and heritage art forms in Aotearoa," winning the Senior Pacific Artist Award Winner of 2018, at the Arts Pasifika Awards through Creative New Zealand.
Demian DinéYazhi' is a Native American artist and activist. Their work and advocacy focuses on indigenous and LGBTQ+ people and "consists of photography, sculpture, text, sound, video, land art performance, installation, street art and fabrics art."
Sky Hopinka is an American visual artist and filmmaker who is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño people. Hopinka was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.
Amao Leota Lu is a Samoan fa’afafine, who is a performance artist, poet and community activist.
Samoa Faʻafafine Association (SFA) is an organisation based in Samoa, which provides support for LGBTQ+ communities. It organises the annual Miss Faʻafafine pageant, provides sexual health educational programming and advocates for the rights of LGBTQ+ people in Samoa, in particular its faʻafafine communities.
FAFSWAG is an arts collective of Māori and Pacific LGBTQI+ artists and activists founded in Auckland, New Zealand in 2013. They explore and celebrate the unique identity of gender fluid Pacific people and LGBTQI+ communities in multi-disciplinary art forms. In 2020 FAFSWAG was awarded an Arts Laureate from the New Zealand Arts Foundation, and they also represented New Zealand at the Biennale of Sydney.
Pati Solomona Tyrell is an interdisciplinary artist from New Zealand who focuses on performance, videography and photography. Tyrell is a founding member of art collective FAFSWAG. In 2018 Tyrell became the youngest nominee for the Walters Prize, New Zealand's most prestigious contemporary art award, for the video work Fāgogo, subsequently purchased by Auckland Art Gallery. In 2020 Tyrell won the Arts Pasifika Awards' Emerging Pacific Artist Award.
Marilyn Rhonda Kohlhase is a New Zealand arts curator and administrator, specialising in Pacific Islands art. She has worked with Auckland War Memorial Museum and Creative New Zealand. Kohlhase set up the first uniquely pan-Pacific art gallery and is known as the "art lady" in some circles.
Cheyne Gallarde is a queer illustrator, actor and photographer who was born and raised in Hawaii. He is known for his vintage comic style drawings which generally focus on significant figures in the LGBTQ+ community.
Tanu Gago is a Samoan interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and curator based in Auckland, New Zealand. He is also co-founder of arts collective FAFSWAG. He is best known for his work that explores intersections of Pacific queer and gender identities, as well as themes of cultural heritage and colonization. Gago's work has been shown in various exhibitions and festivals both nationally and internationally, including the Auckland Arts Festival, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, and the Venice Biennale. Throughout his career, Gago has received numerous awards and grants, including the Creative New Zealand Arts Pasifika Award in 2017 and the Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2020. He received a New Zealand Queens Birthday honour in 2019 for services to art and the LGBTIQ+ community.