Watch: Sue Pearson at the ‘Ahu: Ngā Wairua o Hina wānanga
Watch Pitcairn Norfolk Island tapa artist Sue Pearson talk about her work as a tapa maker and artist.
“For a long time, we've been just colonised and looked through an Australian lens, and so I wanted to see how we could look at ourselves through a Polynesian lens as opposed to the British lens of our forefathers.”
Sue Pearson (Norfolk Island) is an artist and maker of tapa, Pitcairn-Norfolk Island bark cloth – and is collecting information from her foremothers, and ways to tell those stories through tapa.
She talks about how her work illustrates the journey of the 12 women from the Bounty and how their work and children effected survival, as well as her work about the political state of Norfolk Island, the initiatives to achieve self-governance, and how she represents all of the people – from the youth to the elders – moving forward.
Watch Sue Pearson talking about her Norfolk Island tapa practice and what it means to her at the 2023 ‘Ahu: Ngā Wairua o Hina in Tahiti.
‘Ahu: Ngā Wairua o Hina
In 2021, Te Papa acquired a rare book containing tapacloth samples, cut from larger pieces collected during Captain Cook’s Pacific voyages in 1768, 1772, and 1776, and compiled by Alexander Shaw in 1787. The samples represent tapa-making practices from various islands including Hawai‘i, Tahiti and Tonga.
In 2023, in Tahiti, ‘Ahu: Ngā Wairua o Hina gathered tapa makers of Tongan, Sāmoan, Niuean, Fijian, Hawaiian, Tahitian, Pitcairn-Norfolk Island, and Māori descent for five days to learn about and re-establish their living relationships to the cloth held within Alexander Shaw’s book.
Through a process of wānanga this group of makers created two tapa bundles, incorporating the ideas of past, present, and future – one of the bundles is with Te Papa and the other with Te Fare Iamanaha-Musée de Tahiti et des Îles.
