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Shigeyuki Kihara(Samoan, born 1975)Roman Catholic Cathedral, Apia, 2013
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Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia

Alex Clark
Head of Sale, Senior Specialist
Shigeyuki Kihara (Samoan, born 1975)
type C photograph
edition: 2/2
59.0 x 82.0cm (23 1/4 x 32 5/16in).
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
The Gene & Brian Sherman Collection, Sydney
EXHIBITED
Go East: The Gene & Brian Sherman Contemporary Asian Art Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 14 May - 26 July 2015
LITERATURE
Go East: The Gene & Brian Sherman Contemporary Asian Art Collection, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2015, p. 235 (illus.)
RELATED WORK
Another example from this edition is held in the collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, New Zealand
Yuki Kihara has developed a persona called Salome who often appears in her work – named for the biblical figure who, Kihara notes, influenced politics through dance. In these photographs, Salome, dressed in constricting Victorian clothes, gazes out to sea and on the ruined interior of the Roman Catholic Church in Apia following the devastation of Cyclone Evan in 2012. The viewer's gaze is directed by Salome: through her quiet strength and indelible presence, we are invited to consider the effects of colonialism on Sāmoan culture.Kihara describes herself as Fa'afafine – a person within indigenous Sāmoan society who 'does in the manner of a woman'; loosely translated as being 'transgender' in the Western context. Kihara's Salome exists in the vā – which can be understood as a realm that transcends space and time, a place in which relationships between people and things are established. As the poet Albert Wendt writes, the vā is 'not a space that separates but relates, that holds separate entities and things together in the Unity-that-is-All, the space that is context, giving meaning to things.'
























