Angela Tiatia, Walking the Wall, 3-31 October 2014

Angela Tiatia is a multimedia artist and curator whose work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Mexico City, Honolulu and throughout New Zealand and Australia. Through her practice, Tiatia explores structures and exchanges of power - at an interpersonal, group and international level - and how these interactions affect identity, with particular consideration to their impact on the commercialisation and representation of the Pacific.

Her video work Walking the Wall which is currently showing at PAULNACHE is part of an ongoing series, 'An Inventory of Gestures', which explores the tensions that operate between mass global culture and minority culture, with particular focus on the norms and rules placed upon femininity. In the work Walking the Wall, Tiatia uses her body in conflict between the sacred and the uninhibited. By openly revealing her sacred malu (female tattoo), she confronts a Samoan cultural taboo, while simultaneously embracing – to the point of exhaustion – symbols of female sexuality in mass consumer culture.

Walking the Wall was filmed at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Australia.