Sione Tuívailala Monū is an artist of the Tongan diaspora. The artist lives between Canberra Australia and Auckland, and works across the mediums of photography, moving-image, fashion and adornment, performance and drawing exploring identity, family and the pasifika queer experience in the diaspora.
For Ocean Breeze Monu will exhibit a new videowork and a triptych. Monu's films slide between performative and documentary modes to recall a variety of genres, from home movies and video diaries to satires and soaps, and are an extension of his video-based Instagram practice while his photographs depict himself with flower masks in urban/natural surroundings that foster a link to his pacific upbringing. The cloud-like masks are inspired by nimamea'a tuikakala, the Tongan fine art of flower designing and reference Tongan ceremonial and celebratory costume. Monu engages with overlapping histories, highlighting methods that artists use to respond to dominant histories and suggest new ways of understanding Aotearoa and his/her pacific upbringing. Monu’s work creates a new paradigm in which Queer Indigenous arts can be understood as both contemporary and traditional, past and present.
Recent exhibitions include: Scape Public Art - 'AO Kakala Otautahi (2021) ; The Inner Lives of Islands (2021) - Te Tuhi ; Perth (Australia) Institute of Contemporary Art ; Spheres: An Online Video Project, 2020; Christchurch Art Gallery, Kahoa Kakala, Fresh Gallery Otara and Objectspace, 2017; Statuesque Anarchy, Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington, 2017; Pouliuli, Westspace, Melbourne, 2017; Making Space, Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki, Christchurch, 2017; GG Talk That Talk, Fresh Gallery Ōtara, 2016.