Pati Tyrell's commission Tulouna le Lagi (2022) is included in Mana Moana Pōneke, a series of Indigenous short films projected on a water screen over Whairepo Lagoon in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. The programme runs every weekend from the rise of Puanga on 7 June through to Matariki weekend on 22 June.
Mana Moana Pōneke is curated by Israel Randell (Rarotonga, Tainui, Ngāti Kahungunu) and is guided by the wise words of Moana Jackson: "In time, like te ao marama emerging out of te pō, mourning gives way to dreaming." Randell says her curatorial direction has been informed by the 50th anniversary of the land march led by Whina Cooper and how that time is mirrored again with our recent largest hīkoi ever to parliament.
Tulouna le Lagi was commissioned in 2022 as part of Legacies, CIRCUIT’s 7th annual programme of Artist Cinema Commissions, curated by Dr May Adadol Ingawanij (Thai/UK). The work is a visual interpretation of the alagaupu (proverbs) used within Samoan funeral chants and speeches. As Randall describes the work: "Imagery from the artist’s personal photographic archive is layered into the upu and chanted like a drum. The hypnotic film weaves a pathway for us to pay attention to the tohu of our time. The effect is spell-like, as if all that is no longer needed is offered to the ancestors, and here now is queer perfection shaping a future that is swag."
Pati Tyrell is a Samoan interdisciplinary artist with a strong focus on performance. He uses lens-based media to create visual material centred around ideas of urban Pacific queer identity. He has shown work at Museum of Contemporary Arts Australia, Pingyao International Photography Festival, Centre Pompidou Paris and was a 2018 Walters Prize Nominee. Tyrell is co-founder of the queer Pasifika arts collective FAFSWAG, who in 2020 received an Arts Foundation Laureate, and in 2022 showed at documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany.