Please note this event will take place online Wednesday, 13 October.
Time: 7.30-8.30pm.
This event is FREE. Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87109502695
Meeting ID: 871 0950 2695
MELBOURNE FRINGE FESTIVAL ‘21
For Pacific Islanders, our hair are our crowns. Our connection to identity, ancestors and source of pride. But for many islanders growing up in Australia - where straight, western hair is the norm - our hair experiences have left us feeling ostracised, ‘othered’ or exoticised.
Online, the Pasifika Storytellers Collective will gather to share our stories of hair. Stories of resilience, identity, culture and pride.
Warning: Contains moderate coarse language, potentially triggering content or themes, Racism
Artists Include: Marita Davies | Irrawaddy Matuauto-Epa | Lay the Mystic | Jessica Taruna Paraha | Lesieli Taufa | Seini F. Taumoepeau | Veisinia Tonga | Tutulu
“Featuring Special Guest speakers;
Ella Benore Rowe of ‘Elvies’ and Finau Manuofetoa from ‘Mother of Curls’
Host: Marita Davies
Tech Support: Mele-Ane Havea
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This event is proudly supported by Blakademy Art Programs
PASIFIKA STORYTELLERS COLLECTIVE PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Marita Davies
Marita is an Australian/I-Kiribati writer. A storyteller at heart, Marita explores Pacific issues including women, health, domestic violence and climate change. She is passionate about recreating the animated and insightful oral storytelling of Pacific Islanders in various forms. Marita is a children’s book author and has written for frankie, The Guardian, The Big Issue and Dumbo Feather.
Irrawaddy Matuauto-Epa - Iz
(aka Irrawaddy Matuauto-Epa) With just enough letters in her name to speak a tongue tip sound, Iz is a proud Samoan woman birthed on Wurundjeri lands. Her narrative welcomes all take a seat to her explorative process of her getting out of her own way as she writes. The past, present and future is all within the same ever present realm we call ’time’. Iz feels at home in the waves of classical music or heavy base beats, but she feels most at home where the waves border her island fatu, Savai’i, Samoa.
Lay the Mystic
Lay the Mystic is a lyrical poet, musician and dedicated cubby-fort maker based in Narrm.
His current works are centred around intimacy, all things close being both a lens to understand societal or cultural issues, and a landscape to enact change.
Jessica Taruna Paraha
Jessica Taruna Paraha is a multi-disciplinary artist who likes to look at her practice as a loving act of translation. She is a Ngati Hine Māori woman living on Cadigal land, and her translations come from her whakapapa, through recalling them she pays tribute to her tīpuna and the many lands she inhabits.
She is a member of the Pasifika Storytellers collective, is a current recipient of the Emerging Writers Festival’s at home residency program and currently works as a lead artist at the Youth Arts organisation Outloud, delivering social impact arts projects to young people in Western Sydney.
Lesieli Taufa
Born - Kolofo'ou, Tongatapu. Based in Naarm. Of Mixed heritage English/Welsh and Tongan/Samoan
Lesieli is a Performance artist with over 20 years. Taught by Tongan cultural experts in the fields of dance and poetry/heliaki interpretation. Experience and membership include Fringe Festival, New year's Eve Ball Sydney Opera House, Pasifika storytellers, ManaVA. Graduate of The Actors Pulse, Redfern, with stints in the Film and TV industry and Working in commercials, short films, educational videos, and a TV series. At present she is interested in the messages/learnings from our cultural objects, using them as heliaki for life as we live it now. The use of traditional objects in her work provides an opportunity for discussion with my fanau and to collaborate with them - "the importance of intergenerational connections through the Arts".
This PSC event affords me the opportunity to collaborate with my daughter, Mia, who is learning Media and shoots the footage. Any dissent, disagreement, discomfort between mother and daughter is dispelled by sharing sacred space and ancestral knowledge.
Seini F. Taumoepeau
Sēini ‘SistaNative’ Taumoepeau (She/Her) Orator & Songwoman with an Intersectional Oceanic-Pacific lens & First Nations focus. An emerging Elder, Sēini’s career spans 30+ years as Performance Artist, Presenter/Broadcaster & Creative Industries professional. An Indigenous woman of the Mōana & the direct descendant of Ancient Polynesian Celestial Navigators & Chiefly lineage. With energy medicine in her presence, Faivā (performance of space) & Tauhi Vā (relational space) is her praxis, Talanoa: Talk-Story, Cosmology, Human Potential & Technology her central axis. With harmony & rhythm aesthetic, Sēini works first the invisible & intangible, then exploring ideas of connectivity, hōhoko (geneology), ritual, ceremony, communication, relational inter-sectionality & displacement across Tā Vā (Time-Space).
Veisinia Tonga
Veisinia is a Tongan Kakala artist and Storyteller living in Narrm. With a background in Journalism and Floristry. Her art practice with Kakala (plant material) uses the traditional floristry practices of Tonga/Pacifika. As a writer, Veisinia has been published in various publications in New Zealand and Australia. Veisinia sees a need for a vehicle to help elevate Pasifika narratives and to empower the Pasifika community to tell their own stories. She is working to facilitate the transfer of stories from elders (knowledge keepers) to the younger generation in order to continue the oral storytelling traditions of our Pasifika cultures, keenly aware of her role as a future knowledge holder, she takes this responsibility seriously and is actively seeking knowledge and understanding by sitting at the feet of her cultural elders.
Tutulu
What does it look and sound like to create sovereign record of yourself? To navigate the impacts of systemic violence, what can writing hold to carry the weight? These are questions Sāmoan, non-binary, emerging artist, Tutulu, explores through dual-lingual poetry, painting and printmaking. Centring storytelling and song, they also organise events for Te Moana Nui a Kiwa diaspora simultaneously reckoning with disconnection and reclaiming their Indigeneity. Mauga, Matautu, Sāfai and Fasito’outa are their ancestral lands in Sāmoa. They live and create as an uninvited guest on Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung Country in the Kulin Nation.
“Special Guest speakers; Ella Benore Rowe of ‘Elvies’ and Finau Manuofetoa from ‘Mother of Curls’
Ella Benore Rowe ( Founder) Founder of Elvies Hair Studio
A highly experienced hairdresser and stylist, Ella Rowe is driven to empower her clients by celebrating their natural beauty. As a proud Australian and Papua New Guinean woman, Ella has experienced first-hand the lack of black hair education in Australia, which led to hairdressers not being able to cut or style natural curls, waves and coils.
She founded Elvies to create a space for her mother’s and aunties who have never had this experience and for the next generation to flourish through connection to hair and culture.
For Ella, hair isn’t just about how it looks. It is identity, culture and ancestral stories. All of her life, Ella has embraced and nurtured the community around her, and through Elvies, invites you everyone to walk through the door to celebrate who you are.
With Ella, it’s not just about hair. It’s about identity. Ella uses she/her pronouns.
https://www.elvies.com.au/our-team
Mother of Curls
Mother of Curls emerged when founder, Finau Manuofetoa, embarked on a journey of self-discovery to embracing her natural hair.
"As a young Tongan girl, coconut oil was the only product my mum used to style and detangle my hair before braiding it in two because it was the only way to keep it hair neat. I grew up thinking that my frizzy, tangled and boofy hair was ugly and that my beauty was dependent on having straightened hair."
Like many who share this same journey, she had no respect for her hair, she didn't feel confident or beautiful with her hair, and as a result she tried to change and manipulate its natural form. Fast forward to 2016, after a bold move to bleach my hair blonde, "something in me decided that enough was enough. so, I made the choice to take a year to care and nurture my natural hair and to be confident in what I had inherited from my mother, her Tongan curls."
Wavy, curly and coily hair is beautiful in all its different textures and patterns. We are re-defining what beauty used to mean, telling the world that wavy, curly and coily hair can be professional, can be worn to a formal event and can be a bold statement to our wild and carefree personalities.
To check out her popular Tropical Curl Range go to www.motherofcurls.net or follow her on Instagram at @MotherofCurls_