27Feb

22May

A Study of a Samoan Savage

A Study of a Samoan Savage responds, in part, to the recent problematic treatment of Polynesian men as powerful but primitive players in Rugby culture. Large format photographs and a life-size projection are displayed alongside rare archives to critique the historical and ongoing fetishizing of Samoan men as athletic specimens. Using a sequential photographic process, Kihara subverts the anthropological impulses that objectify, exoticise and eroticise the Pacific male body.

Images include nudity, parental guidance advised.

Yuki Kihara, ‘Nose Width with Vernier Caliper’ (2015)
Courtesy of the Artist and Milford Galleries Dunedin

Yuki Kihara

27 February – 22 May 2016

Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Auckland