Pacific Sisters

The Pacific Sisters is a Tāgata Moana art collective that emerged from the fringes of mainstream arts and culture in New Zealand, in 1992. They are now celebrated for their multi-disciplinary practice that blends Moana heritage art and contemporary forms to create fashion activism. Through ceremony, art, adornment and performance, they embrace and assert their urban Māori, Pacific, and Queer identities, unique to Aotearoa (New Zealand). Pacific Sisters advocate for the environment, Indigenous, POC and Queer rights and body sovereignty. The collective is an active and influential part of the wider Moana arts community, nurturing and mentoring younger artists as well as inspiring and supporting each other’s individual art practices. Renowned for their philosophical or ‘kaupapa-driven’ frock ethos, which envisions clothing less as adornment than as a statement of power, each Pacific Sister aitu (avatar) has a unique story.

“Born into the world are three new aitu (avatars) that embody the kaupapa (philosophy) of Pacific Sisters’ fashion activist works:

1): MuruMoa, named for one of the sites of the French nuclear tests conducted from 1966 to 1996, guards what is left of a post-nuclear world, protecting motu (lands), moana (oceans) and tagata (people).

2): Sup’ia Suga, believer in pono (honesty), manaakitanga (kindness and generosity) and ataahuatanga (supa-fabulous), is described as ‘part Wonder Woman and part Superman, and all girl power.’ Encouraging each of us to take responsibility for our own actions, Sup’ia Suga is here to save the day.

3): Tapu Tinana embodies Nephi Tupaea’s personal journey back to her whānau (family group), and Kaitiaki with a K wears an obsidian-like videotape cloak in lieu of natural fibres. An obsolete material, the videotape ripples as if alive.”