What is your VVAI?

In 2021, the Ockham Collective's Jasmine Tuiā and her artistic collaborator Ashleigh Taupaki took part in a digital residency offered by the Übersee Museum Bremen, which asked its participants to investigate what it means to name Pacific cultural objects within a museum context. The What is your VVAI? exhibition, at Ōtara's Fresh Gallery, is part of their response to the topic.

"VVAI combines the Māori term for water (wai) with its Samoan equivalent (vai)," explains Tuiā. "What is your VVAI? focuses on the life cycles of Pacific cultural materials connected to place, space and people."

The exhibition consists of installations of pigments, rocks, photography, drawings, tapa and sculpture. It runs for two months, until the end of July.