Hastings Art Gallery will open this weekend with a celebration of traditional Tongan artforms reimagined through a contemporary art lens by two celebrated Tongan artists – Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck and Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi.
First exhibited in Auckland in 2021, ‘Amui ‘i mu’a – Ancient Futures is the culmination of a four-year research project, which saw the pair travelling the world to view traditional 18th and 19th Century Tongan artefacts in museum collections in Australia, United States, United Kingdom, France, Austria, Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand.
The pair are excited to bring the exhibition to Heretaunga-Hastings and hope local Tongan and wider Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa communities will connect with their work, which includes responses to ngatu, Tongan barkcloth, alongside other traditional art forms.
Included in the exhibition are three 20th Century ngatu, from the Hawke’s Bay Museum Trust Collections. One of these ngatu references Queen Elizabeth II, a sign of how ngatu are used within the Tongan community, Dagmar says.
“Ngatu has always mirrored the times in which the maker is making – it’s about recording history, recording narratives and stories.”
Filipe, who was born in Tonga and has been described as ‘Tongan art’s foremost ambassador’, says that seeing traditional artefacts in person connected him to his Tongan identity in a more palpable way.
“It gave me a chance to look more in depth into the more traditional Tongan approach. And, at the same time, it was a learning thing to be able to look at all the Tongan objects, we call it koloa, because you don’t usually have a chance to look at that kind of traditional [practice],” he says.
Dagmar was the first New Zealand woman of Tongan descent to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Postgraduate Diploma of Arts, from Elam School of Fine Arts in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
“I’ve been looking at these objects all my life. So, it’s an ongoing opportunity to delve deeper and actually be physically in contact with these objects. That was the privileged part of our position – actually being able to be physically in the same space as them, given that most of them are offshore,” she says.
“It’s spiritual, it’s emotional, it ticks all those things – because for many of the objects that we were in contact with, a lot of them aren’t being made anymore, or we’ve lost the knowledge around their origins and their purpose. That was the beauty of the conversations about what they are used for.”
But Dagmar is quick to point out that she and Filipe do not consider themselves experts in these objects. “We know that within our communities there are knowledge-holders who would have insights into that – so the more of our community that can see [this project], they will be able to offer those insights into it as well.”
Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga – Hastings Art Gallery is open from 10am till 4.30pm, Monday to Saturday, and from 1pm till 4pm on Sundays.
