EXHIBITION OPENING : FREEDOM IN THEIR NOWNESS

Freedom in their Nowness | Fanafana me‘a ‘a ha‘a fafine (Whispers between the sisterhood) 

II 
Freedom: in their nowness, in their 
specificity. Free to roam like the 
archipelago of cloud that now frames 
the earth. The earth itself inchoate and 
humbled. And they are an irruption into 
it. A conflation – a whole – a catalysis. 

- ‘Amanu’a by Cameron Ah-Loo Matamua 

Freedom in their Nowness: Fanafana me‘a ‘a ha‘a fafine explores the inextricable ties forged within the sisterhoods of the MVPFAFF community, bound by parallel experiences across time and geographical placings. We wish to foreground the foundational imprint of maternal lineages on the androgynous mind, and to honour the sacred transferrals of knowledge between the healer and the wounded, mother, and daughter/son, and also amongst sisters. This exhibition is a manifestation of the sacred mycelial-like network that we as sisters form a part of. 

The MVPFAFF experience, like the experiences of many POC and members of the diaspora, often transcends time and space. All of our lives, both contemporary and ancient exists concurrent to one another, all enriched by the cultural memory of our collective experiences. How this cultural memory persists and is codified into language and gesture, and the distinct lineal connection between each generation’s iteration of this memory across all of time and space fortifies our inherent bonds. The distinct vernaculars and expressions cultivated within our circles seemingly stem from an ineffable root. A root that sits intrinsically with the core of our beings and has/will manifest itself generation after generation in the lives of those who have come before us and in those who will follow.