By Biennale of Sydney
22nd Biennale of Sydney: NIRIN
re(cul)naissance re(cul)naissance (2020) by Léuli EshrāghiBiennale of Sydney
About the artist
Born 1986 in Yuwi Country, Australia
Lives and works in Garrmalang / Darwin, Australia and Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal, Canada
Sāmoan
Dr Léuli Eshrāghi is a Sāmoan artist, curator and researcher who intervenes in display territories to centre Indigenous presence and power, sensual and spoken languages, and ceremonial-political practices.
re(cul)naissance Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
re(cul)naissance
Léuli Eshrāghi worked with artist collaborators Tommy Misa, Stelly Gapp and Kiliati Pahulu to create elements of the installation and performance.
re(cul)naissance Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
re(cul)naissance, meaning stepping back, and rebirth through the end in French, takes form as an eight-limbed feʻe deity represented in ancestral and new motifs, on printed, iridescent fabric lengths that reach across the space.
re(cul)naissance Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
The work creates a ceremonial space that honours both precolonial kinship systems, life-cycles, pleasures, connections, multiple genders and sexualities, and creates a speculative future-space free of colonial shame.
re(cul)naissance Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
"Through its forms, materialities and concepts, the work activates different Sāmoan and other Indigenous concepts, including ‘mālamalama, the process of understanding or enlightenment through close reading or attentiveness to symbiotic pō, the potential-filled night/origin of the universe, and lagi, multiple heavens from which all deities relate to humans and other kin animals."
- Léuli Eshrāghi
re(cul)naissance re(cul)naissance (2020) by Léuli EshrāghiBiennale of Sydney
Drawing on the natural light, the space is also a symbolic reversal of the notion of the ‘Coming of the Light’ (the evangelical missionary project forcefully conducted around the world) instead embracing the Indigenous practices and forms of expression considered deviant by Western missionaries.
re(cul)naissance Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
"Building on ongoing research into multilingual and international Indigenous considerations of genders, sexualities, pleasures and futurities, re(cul)naissance comprises a neon, fabric, water pool and moving image installation...
re(cul)naissance Installation ImageBiennale of Sydney
...re(cul)naissance proposes a future state of unmitigated wellbeing and unashamed pleasure for faʻafafine, faʻatama, queer, trans, non-binary and further peoples who have been violently removed from our erstwhile key roles in intellectual and ceremonial life in multiple Indigenous kinship systems."
- Léuli Eshrāghi
Tap to explore
Navigate through and explore the installation re(cul)naissance at Cockatoo Island in 360.
re(cul)naissance, 2020
fluoro polymer glue, puff, rainbow and blue metallic foil screenprint on fine cotton, steel water pool, water, sand, rocks, gold adhesive, HD video, garments by babylikestopony, and performance with collaborating artists Tommy Misa, Sereima Adimate and Kiliati Pahulu
Courtesy the artist
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous support from the Australia Council for the Arts, Artspace, and generous assistance from babylikestopony, Spacecraft, Neolite, Angela Tiatia, Jeremy Skellern, Julia Greenstreet, Edward Horne, Nina Ambjerg-Pedersen and Hannah Rauwendaal
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