Fa'ailoga: An Exploration of Tautua Through Art Practice

Abstract

This thesis investigates the Sāmoan practice of fa’ailoga, which means to mark or to speak through practice-led methods of printmaking and installation. I centre the term tautua (service) and use it as a methodological framework where I apply the metaphorical sense of tautua in my creative process. My research seeks a personal interpretation of tautua that is expressed primarily in screen-printing and photographic techniques. Through tautua, I am interested in how mafaufauga (Indigenous thinking) transfers to how I respond to my surroundings, which is then applied into fa’atino (the action of creating). I use the method of fa’alogo (observation) as a form of tautua in photo-essays of significant places in my villages of Ōtara in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa and my father’s village in Tokomololo, Tonga, as a way of sustaining community connection. The act of screen-printing over a long duration and installing long prints on calico in a gallery space presents an expressions of tautua; where a contemporary artform is connected to the labour of making Sāmoan siapo (Sāmoan bark cloth) and Tongan ngatu (Tongan bark cloth) and the endurance of receiving a pe’a (Sāmoan male tattoo).