Photos Of Samoa’s Fa’afafine Community That Reshape Coloniser Art

In the late 1800s renowned French artist, Paul Gauguin, travelled to the Pacific Island of Tahiti in search of a “primitive society”. What he painted as a result – through the tanned girls, the saturated florals, the bright sun – was a fantasy-scape based somewhere between observation and idealism. They became his most famous works.

But when an outsider is in a position of power to imbue “fact” with bias, the results don’t always lend themselves to the truth. For the last century, Paul Gauguin's works have shown an idealised version of Polynesia and a narrative that has leaned closer to falsehood. What he missed was a deeper understanding of the nature of Tahitian and Pacific Islander life. Though this likely wasn’t purposeful, it was important.

Samoan, Japanese artist, Yuki Kihara’s latest exhibition, Paradise Camp, directs its attention at reversing that erasure by replacing Gauguin’s gender-binary characters with Fa'afafine – the third gender of Samoa. Through repurposed Gaugin artworks that show women lazing on beaches, and families posing for portraits, Kihara recreates scenes with photography in a similarly bright and fantastical fashion. In the process, she interweaves the modernity of issues plaguing the Pacific Islands: global warming and colonialistic interpretations of gender.

“I selected 12 paintings by Paul Gauguin that I felt resembled the Samoan environment, and then recreated, or upcycled, his paintings within the Samoan cultural context,” Kihara told VICE.

“His legacy is not something I’m necessarily interested in. He was merely a catalyst for me to talk about the plight of the Pacific community in the face of climate change.”

For Kihara, Gauguin became a metaphor for how climate change was drowning indigenous Pacific identities and also how pre-colonial gender identity was misconstrued through the white-eye. 

“I make work in a way that imbues aspects of the truth,” she said.

“My work is based on history, and it's about rewriting history. And having the autonomy and the sovereignty to speak about history from our own indigenous perspective, rather than relying on the narratives of the Empire.”

Kihara’s portraits are bright and over-saturated. In one photo, “Two Fa'afafine”, two models wear red and green ‘ie lavalava’s, while one holds a bowl of rambutans. The tropical foliage contrasts the golden brown of their skin as one stares to camera, the other turns their head in a posture of dignity and poise. It’s a depiction of Gauguin’s “Two Tahitian Women'' painted in 1899.

“So the Fa'afafine is a third gender community in Samoa,” said Kihara.

“So we are part of the culturally recognized genders in Samoa but we’re not legally recognized. And I saw some aspects of the Fa'afafine community together with the Samoan landscape in [Gauguin’s] paintings.”

Though Gauguin never set foot in Samoa, only travelling around the islands of Tahiti, upon further research Kihara found evidence that the late-painter was inspired by Samoan postcards that were foundational in the development of his major paintings.

“I felt that this was a form of appropriation that I could speak back to as a way of reclaiming agency,” she said.

With help and collaboration from over 100 members of the Fa'afafine community, a project which was conceptualised in 2008 came to fruition in 2020 and Kihara became the New Zealand representative for the 59th iteration of the La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. She was also the first Pasifika artist, the first Asian artist and the first Fa'afafine. 

Paradise Alley has now made its way to Australia, housed in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. An act which Kihara says is “art within art.”

“What's really interesting about Paradise Camp at the Powerhouse Museum is that I see the exhibition as a form of intervention into the history of a place that enshrines Australian technological advancement at the expense of environmental devastation,” she says.

“So here I am, in my exhibition, talking about climate change in a venue that talks about the height of Australian industrialization. Which is all linked.”

Inside her showcase, observers can find walls printed in vibrant beach portraiture covered in her 12 recreations of Gauguin’s works. There’s also personal photos showing environmental devastation, news clippings depicting Australia and China’s tug-of-war for power in the Pacific and a video where, in a sense, Kihara mocks Gaugin’s naivety in the islands by using prosthetic make-up – acting out a discussion between himself and a Fa'afafine.

The experience pervades the often stereotypical gaze of the West.

“For me art is the veil. And my job is to encourage the audience to look behind the veil,” says Kihara.

“To look behind the Paradise or the images of paradise that overshadow the kind of environmental catastrophe that we're facing in the Pacific. And then why is it that in this climate change space or environmental space, Fa'afafine or LGBTQ+ people’s voices are neglected?”

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