Watch: Sulieti Fieme‘a Burrows at the ‘Ahu: Ngā Wairua o Hina wānanga
Watch Tongan ngatu (tapa) artist Sulieti Fieme‘a Burrows talk about her work as a ngatu maker and artist.
“I keep doing my work because it reminds me of my parents. I always remember them because they gave me the best thing in the world for me to carry, and I can give to my daughter for her to carry, for her daughter, to keep moving.”
Sulieti Fieme‘a Burrows (Tonga) is an artist and maker of ngatu, tongan bark cloth – and creates ngatu with older patterns to keep the memory of how they were.
She talks about how she learned to make ngatu from her parents and how important it has been to see what Tongan ngatu looked like because it was collected in the Shaw book.
Watch Sulieti Fieme‘a Burrows talking about her Tongan ngatu 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.
