Wayfinding and New Zealand Fashion Week.
Cerisse’s interests are diverse, often contemplating the interconnected mix of architecture, pattern & landscape she also investigates the connectedness through everyday language (polyslang), photography (smart phone) & drawings. During her masters she explored the notion of coded languages used in text messaging and online social networking, in relation to the way in which the English language has been modified and adapted to suit how Pacific Island and Maori Youth communicate using colloquialisms and account. She raises the consciousness around shifts and loss of language; through an examination of a hybrid language Cerisse calls Polyslang. Not just as a spoken and written language, but as a way of life and culture. Using social networking as an underlying structure she focuses on how these platforms create sub-communities and asks whether through participation we are in fact creating a global Polynesian language.
Cerisse investigates the role of female form and the depiction of the indigenous woman. In 2007, Cerisse collaborated with artist Natalie Couch in the exhibition Manu at Artstation. In response to the Pocahontas meets Hello Kitty exhibition, which explored popular feminine characters of indigenous women, the pair produced a series of mixed media screen prints based on the iconic ‘Manu' souvenir doll. They freed Manu of her characteristic kapa haka costume and presented a new, fresh, ‘down with the brown' Manu sporting puffy afros, lavalava, sunnies and cheong sam dresses. Re-instilling the mana of this kiwiana icon and stereotype allowed the artists to reflect on their favoured childhood toy and honour the diversity of contemporary Maori and Pacific women. Presented like photographs in a typical Pacific living room they are reflections of cousins, friends, sisters and mothers, the modern day Manu's. In her solo exhibition Ranea 2007 at Fresh Gallery, Otara, Cerisse digitally re-worked 19th century postcards of the exotic ‘Maori Beauty'. Placed on atamira (traditional Maori platforms of offering) the women were re-presented as the seven sisters of Matariki, adorned with full-length korowai and admired as cultural vessels of knowledge.
Cerisse has exhibited in a number of group and solo exhibitions including:Â #SWWDH2K13, Artstation, 2013; Niutoni, Solander Gallery, 2013; Moturei, Deane Gallery, City Gallery, 2010; Taa Moemoea, Solander Gallery, 2009; Strengthening Sennit, St Paul St Gallery, Auckland, 2008; Flat White Black Pearl, Te Karanga Gallery, Auckland, 2008 and Cultural Collision, Te Wananga o Aotearoa, 2004.
