Hina’s Granddaughters is an immersive experience of poetry, song and sound accompanied by moving images projected onto a screen of ’ahufara tapa. This collaboration between Pearson (creative director, photographer, image and screenmaker) and Reynolds (poet, songwriter and narrator) is borne from the epistemologies of their tupuna wahine who founded a new people and culture on Hitiaurevareva (Pitcairn) in 1790. This culture later travelled to Norfolk Island in 1856 with the descendants of those founding women. This project celebrates the artists’ connection to the wider Te Moana Nui a Hiwa while highlighting the value of reigniting and understanding ancestral practices.
The poetry and imagery of Hina’s Granddaughters invoke the world of Hina (goddess of tapa makers) who guided and soothed those original tupuna wahine, and who still sings into the hearts of their descendants who today populate Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands and the wider diaspora throughout the Pacific.
Norfolk Islanders Sue Pearson and Pauline Reynolds, artists and cultural practitioners, are invested in telling the stories of their homeland and encouraging the regeneration of the practice of making ’ahu (tapa), which in turn honours their tupuna wahine.
Hina’s Granddaughters is brought to life with the extraordinary editing and animation skills of Mike Bridgman. The children of the artists also contribute to the work: Oihanu plays the vivo, John contributes tapa, Ruby represents characters in the poems and Mauatua is the vocalist. This intergenerational approach to storytelling is full of hope that in the future, the Norfolk Island culture will continue to regenerate and grow.
