Yuki Kihara

In 1722, a Dutch expedition led by admiral Jacob Roggeveen made the first sighting of Sāmoa. While that fleet of West India Company ships never set ashore, the news of this “discovery” was nevertheless passed on, opening a pathway towards future incursions. Yet, Kihara asks, ‘what if they had never seen us?’ What alternative futures might Sāmoans and other Pasifika people have built for themselves?  

Historic photographs of European and U.S. shipwrecks are seen here beside grainy digital images of the HMNZS Manawanui, a Royal New Zealand Navy vessel which sank off the coast of Sāmoa in 2024, and shipping containers bobbing on the surface of the water, all enlarged to life-size and overlayed onto theatre flats. The set-up creates an armature of sorts, revealing the ongoing neo-colonialist regimes and the direct impact of asymmetric power relations. With the greatness of the Moana, such endeavours – driven by a desire to dominate and control – appear wasteful and ill-fated.  

Yet the story does not end here. Sāmoan double-hulled canoes sail in to signal another type of awareness, one that acknowledges the might of nature, and the magnificence of the Moana. Their presence honours the legacy of ancestral and indigenous knowledge systems of Pasifika people who learned to live with and through the Moana with dignity and humility at the same time. The installation is a reminder that even within the context of climate catastrophe and environmental decline, other routes are (still) possible.