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The project hypothesizes that experiences of Samoanness are spatially embedded – in landscapes, journeys, and multiple localities. They are also simultaneously, yet temporally, negotiated – through memories, narratives, and genealogies.
Research Assistant: Annika Sippel
Collections Data Officer: Sara Riordan
Overarching Project: Indigeneities in the 21st Century: From ‘vanishing people’ to global players in one generation.
Partners: Professor Philip Schorch (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Germany).
Funding: European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation Programme.
Project description:
The project speculates that Sāmoan experiences emerge from sources, and through registers, that reach deeper and transcend the capacity to be expressed “in their own words”.
Zooming in on the interplay of bodies, environments, and material entities (such as so-called ethnographic objects and work of arts spread around the globe and housed in museum collections), might offer us novel insights into why and how Samoanness remains intact despite ongoing transformations: being reshaped but not ruptured, maintaining its integrity within flexible boundaries.
Following such reasoning, the project studies Sāmoan multiplicities past, present and future. More information about this project can be found on Indigeneities in the 21st century.
Primary outputs: Conference presentation, exhibition.
Apia, Samoa, July 1884, by Burton Brothers studio, Alfred Burton. Purchased 1943. Te Papa (C.016550)
Research Assistant Annika Sippel presents an overview of the Sāmoan Multiplicities project so far, and considers some of the avenues in which our own collections can engage with ideas of Sāmoan Multiplicities.
As part of the Sāmoan Multiplicities research project, Research Assistant Annika Sung curated an exhibition at The New Zealand Portrait Gallery using Te Papa’s historical photography collection and the works of contemporary artists.
Find out about the people that make up our Pacific Cultures team and their roles at Te Papa.
