Meet the Artist: Naawie Tutugoro

Creating site-specific works that illuminate negotiations of place and space specific to the urban Pasifika experience.

Naawie’s work is in Moana Legacy at Tautai Gallery
6 July – 18 September, 2020

Born to a Kanak father and Anglo-Argentinian/European mother, Naawie Tutugoro is a Tāmaki Makaurau-born multi-disciplinary artist. Her practice comprises of site-specific works that illuminate negotiations of place and space specific to the urban Pasifika experience.

Tutugoro is currently living on Waiheke island, and has exhibited throughout Tāmaki Makaurau. Most recently, she collaborated with her friend and sculptor Jenny Takahasi Palmer on the exhibition ‘*subtleRESPECT’ at Window Gallery and is currently completing her Master of Fine Arts at ELAM.

“Hair discrimination and invisibility has been something I have become aware of growing up with afro hair.”

– Naawie Tutugoro, 2020

Growing up, especially as women, we are bombarded with contradicting desires and messages regarding beauty standards and self-acceptance. The idea of taming one’s hair is assimilation in practice, altering oneself to fit into the mould of what is considered acceptable.

“Bendy Rollers”, are a product used to alter the texture/style or hair speaking to ideas of cultural appropriation and fetishisation of black and brown bodies. By re-purposing the curlers as connections of a lei, Naawie dismantles the meanings attached to the material and in a decolonising act, the lei of hair curlers is transformed into an imagined umbilical cord to the spirit world.

Naawie Online
Instagram: @astonishing_coco_puff

More Information:
Moana Legacy, 6 July – 18 September 2020

For further information please email us
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