Dusky Ain’t Dead Just Diversified
In a career that spans three decades and divided equally between the UK and Aotearoa, Rosanna Raymond (b.1967) continues to gain international acclaim for her acti.VĀ.tions, performances, research, poetry, artistic and curatorial practice. We met in her studio named ‘Ana Pekapeka’ (bat cave), a place that hosts many an artist or cultural practitioner and what she describes as ‘a refuge where art and life converge, and activism is played out through everyday (sometimes mundane) actions’. This kind of dynamism is akin to the gravitational pull of the Pacific Sisters, a collective of which she is a founding member, as well as The SaVAge K’lub which she founded in 2010; both pursue the formation and transformation of communities and urban spaces in Aotearoa and internationally. During this talanoa, we are surrounded by aitu (gods/spirits) that Raymond has called on during her practice and, in each instance, they reappear to propel a collaborative vision of the future by looking to the past.
Ane Tonga: Let’s begin in the true Pacific tradition of looking to the past to move forward into the future, starting with your somewhat prophetic expression: ‘we don’t stare at coconuts—we stare at motorways’. What does this mean for you now?
Rosanna Raymond: This quote is from a time before the internet and social media came into our lives.
I’m still not staring at coconuts, the motorway has been replaced with the digital vā that has connected a diversity of niu urbanesian voices and experiences together . . . our new motorway. I feel more connected to the Moana than ever before.
A.T.: Elements of your practice as an individual artist feel like they have synergies and continuity from the Pacific Sisters. I’m thinking about the importance of ceremony and the power of dress and taonga.
R.R.: The Sisters is where we developed protocols to work with tikanga (custom), because we didn’t have much experience of tikanga back then. And sometimes I think we paid the consequence for it too, just in terms of our own sort of chaos, or you get sick, and that’s when we realised our tīpuna had provided us with a set of tools for us to use . . . back then it was like ‘oh no, that stuff is for the really sacred, tapu stuff and
