12.9. – 17.9.

Latai Taumoepeau

Latai Taumoepeau makes live-art-work. Her faivā (body-centred practice) is from her homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga and her birthplace Sydney, land of the Gadigal. She mimicked, trained and un-learned dance, in multiple institutions of learning, beginning with her village, a suburban church hall, the club and a university. Her faivā (performing art) centres Tongan philosophies of relational vā (space) and tā (time); cross-pollinating ancient and everyday temporal practice to make visible the impact of climate crisis in the Pacific. She conducts urgent environmental movements and actions to assist transformation in Oceania.

Latai engages in the socio-political landscape of Australia with sensibilities in race, class & the female body politic; committed to bringing the voice of unseen communities to the frangipani-less foreground. Latai has presented and exhibited across borders, countries, and coastines. Her works are held in private and public collections including written publications.

Latai was recently awarded a 2022 Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship and the Australia Council of the Arts Fellowship in the Emerging and Experimental Arts category. She is also a recipient of the Prague Quadrennial – Excellence in Performance Design Award in 2019. In the near future Latai will return to her ancestral home and continue the ultimate faivā of deep sea voyaging and celestial navigation before she becomes ancestor.

With this body I remember, with this body I re-wild

Latai Taumoepeau (TO/AU)

12.9. – 17.9.

Latai Taumoepeau, the ANTI Festival Prize for Live Art winner 2022, presents a work that illuminates the impact of climate change on vulnerable low lying island and coastal communities.

With this body I remember, with this body I re-wild is a site specific participatory ritual and panel discussion by Latai Taumoepeau and international working group. The work illuminates the impact of climate change on vulnerable low lying island and coastal communities.

As an artist from the Pacific Island Kingdom of Tonga residing in Gadigal land Sydney Australia, Latai Taumoepeau is interested in bringing an Oceanic perspective from the Moana (Great Ocean). She will co-create the work with, among others, artist and fellow climate emergency and crip advocate Hanna Cormick who has Finnish and Sami heritage. The work is produced by Intimate Spectacle with ANTI Festival.

As diaspora living and working on unceded lands of the oldest continuing culture on the continent of Australia; the artists are working with their indigenous concepts of connecting to ancestral lands or as it is spoken there “connecting with Country”.

Latai Taumoepeau is the 2022 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art. The prize and the performance at ANTI Festival are funded by the Saastamoinen Foundation.