Latai Taumoepeau (TO/AU): Stitching up the sea

Stitching up the sea is a durational performance ritual and meditation, exploring the fragility and vulnerability of people, the physical environment and intangible cultural heritage of the Moana.

She is surrounded by a wall of white sacks filled with empty glass bottles, stacked up on top of a white tarpaulin. She is wearing brick sandals on her feet and an ‘ike (Tongan mallet) usually used to beat mulberry bark into large ceremonial cloth called tapa or ngatu. Glass waste material sourced locally is smashed into a mass of glistening shards.

Each empty torn bag adorns her neck as a lei/sisi, usually a garland of fresh tropical flowers and leaves used to welcome guests to keep the neck cool in the heat and as a body adornment in formal Pacific presentations.

Stitching up the sea, is a cyclical continuum of tauhi vā, the holistic practice of maintaining space through social relationships, and faivā, the practice of time-and-space through relational obligation in performance.

This work explores the intangible cultural heritage of the Moana/Oceania and the complex relationships suspended in the sea of islands of the Pacific Ocean. Emphasising the futile actions of the most vulnerable communities impacted by environmental capitalist climate crisis and the imbalance of power in caring for country.

Through her grief, she ceremoniously holds her sea of islands close. Facing the past, she backs into the ugly future, maybe she’s making sand maybe she’s rebuilding her ancestral land. Can she relocate saltwater sovereignty?

Originally commissioned by Blacktown Arts Centre in the greater western Sydney, Stitching up the sea is an evolving solo work that aims to create visibility of a people who have inhabited and embodied the enormous Pacific Ocean for thousands of years.

Stitching up the sea excavates a live dystopic image of idyllic island destinations mostly considered as holiday destinations to outsiders. Void of Pina Colada cocktails, hypnotic hip-swaying and rugby balls, this performance documents a dangerous current of transformation and dispossession due to human induced climate change.

Cultural collaborators – Taliu Aloua and Tevita Havea
Sound composition – James Brown
Design and dramaturgical constultant – Carlos Gomes
Lighting Designer – Amber Silk

Commissioned by Blacktown Arts Centre with funding from the Australia Council of the Arts.

Latai Taumoepeau (TO/AU)

The more ancient I am, the more contemporary my work is.
I am not doing anything new.
When I do faivā, I perform space. When I do space, I do time – they are inseparable.
When I faivā, I do form. When I do form, I also do content – they are inseparable.
Faivā is the art of organising and performing social duties related to place, the body and environment – they are inseparable. I am an anti-disciplinary artist. Alive today.

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.

Photo credit: Katy Green-Loughrey