realitybitesartblog

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

Bite 61: Shigeyuki Kihara - Sina Ma Tuna: Sina and Her Eel, 2003

Posted on February 15, 2011 by niten
Sina Ma Tuna: Sina and Her Eel, 2003
In the series Vavau - Tales from ancient Samoa Shigeyuki Kihara mimics the tradition of velvet painting through photography and self-portraiture. “Where the velvet painters are notorious for portraying Pacific people from the colonial gaze, what I do is re-occupy that gaze" she says. "I come from a point of view from the insider.” 

The work Sina Ma Tuna: Sina and Her Eel  depicts Kihara in the role of Sina from the traditional Samoan myth ‘Sina and the Eel’, in which the origins of the coconut are explained. After being attacked by the eel some men kill it and, in mourning, Sina buries the head of the eel. The head then grows into the first coconut tree. 

Kihara, in this image, has chosen to portray the grieving Sina with her head turned, out of the blackness, toward the viewer. Holding up the eel, the object of her loss, with blood running down her arm, the viewer is invited into her pain. 

One possible interpretation of this re-enactment, in relation to gender performance and the ambiguity surrounding the ‘third gender’, would see the eel as a phallic symbol. While society expects her to grieve the loss of her masculinity Kihara is ironically pointing out that there is in fact nothing to grieve: she is both male and female, breaking the binary. Again Kihara is challenging her own marginalisation and societal categorisations about who she is and how her body should be portrayed. Through the image of a beautiful grieving ‘dusky maiden’ Kihara is confronting the expectation that she has anything to grieve or feel sorry for at all. On the contrary, it is others who should be feeling sorry. 

As Jim Vivieaere puts it “‘Who am I, what am I, and what are you?' are questions that will never haunt or torment Kihara.” But, these certainly are questions that Kihara wants to confront us, and our colonial legacy, with. It is this myriad of questions, challenges, ambiguities and compromising of binaries, throughout Kihara’s work, that never leaves the viewer without feeling challenged.

Sources:
Absolutearts.com
C. Vercoe, “The Many Faces of Paradise” in Paradise Now: Contemporary Art from the Pacific (Auckland: David Bateman Ltd., 2004), 46.
J. Vivieaere, Exhibition Catalogue for Shigeyuki Kihara: In the manner of a woman. Sherman Galleries, 2005. 
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to Facebook
Posted in animals, colour, contemporary art, New Zealand, non-western art, nude, photo, photography, portrait, Samoa, self portrait | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • Bite 47: Claude Cahun - Que Me Veux-Tu? (What Do You Want From Me?), 1928
    Que Me Veux-Tu? (What Do You Want From Me?), 1928 AndrĂ© Breton, founder of the Surrealist movement, called her “one of the most curious spi...
  • Bite 20: Duane Michals - The House I Once Called Home, 2003
    The House I Once Called Home , 2003 The raw material of photography is light and time. Each photograph then, although appearing solid, conta...
  • Bite 118: George Segal - The Restaurant Window, 1967
    The Restaurant Window , 1967, mixed media, 244 x 351 x 175 cm, Museum Ludwig, Cologne An Edward Hopper painting  become sculpture, the lonel...

Categories

  • abstraction
  • American Realism
  • animals
  • Argentina
  • art history
  • Baroque
  • Beat Generation
  • Biblical
  • black and white
  • book
  • book shop
  • books
  • bookshop
  • bookstore
  • Chile
  • colour
  • Conceptual Art
  • contemporary art
  • death
  • Denmark
  • drawing
  • England
  • France
  • Funk
  • gay
  • gender
  • genre painting
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • history of photography
  • Impressionism
  • installation
  • Italy
  • Korea
  • LA
  • landscape
  • literature
  • locality
  • London
  • lyrics
  • Medieval
  • Mexico
  • mixed-media
  • Modern Art
  • museums
  • music
  • myth
  • Nabis
  • Neo-Classicism
  • Neolithic
  • Netherlands
  • New York
  • New Zealand
  • non-western art
  • nude
  • NYC
  • Op Art
  • painting
  • Paris
  • pastel
  • Performance Art
  • personal
  • photo
  • photo journalism
  • photography
  • poetry
  • Pop Art
  • portrait
  • Post-Colonialism
  • Pre-Raphaelite
  • prehistoric
  • public art
  • quotation
  • quote
  • Realism
  • Renaissance
  • Romanticism
  • Samoa
  • sculpture
  • self portrait
  • Spain
  • still life
  • Sublime
  • Surrealism
  • Tahiti
  • tapestry
  • travel
  • USA
  • video
  • war

Blog Archive

  • February 2012 (2)
  • January 2012 (9)
  • December 2011 (1)
  • November 2011 (3)
  • September 2011 (3)
  • August 2011 (9)
  • July 2011 (5)
  • June 2011 (14)
  • May 2011 (18)
  • April 2011 (17)
  • March 2011 (16)
  • February 2011 (21)
  • January 2011 (24)
  • December 2010 (8)
Powered by Blogger.

Search This Blog

Report Abuse

  • Home

About Me

niten
View my complete profile