posted on 2019-11-30, 00:00authored byTorika Bolatagici
Kirisimasi
History
Alternative title
Christmas
Location
Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery
Start date
2019-11-30
End date
2020-03-01
Language
eng
Notes
Te Uru’s exhibition aims to reposition nuclear testing and militarisation in the region as both present and future concerns. The exhibition title comes from a banner made and held by women in the Rongelap atoll to greet the Rainbow Warrior. It read ‘We loved, the future of our kids’. As a future-orientated phrase, but in an unusual past-tense, the banner has become a touchstone for thinking about these events, not as static but as histories that could inform how we want to move forward and what we want known. It prioritises the futures of the next generation. ‘The Future of Our Kids’ features works by two international artists, Jane Chang Mi (Honolulu; Los Angeles) and Torika Bolatagici (Melbourne). Bolatagici presents a series of documentary videos and stills that tell the story of Fijian nuclear veterans who participated in Britain’s nuclear testing programme at Christmas Island and Malden Island in the 1950s. Despite a decade-long legal struggle and recent medical research highlighting genetic impacts, the UK Ministry of Defence refuses to acknowledge that any veterans’ health was affected.
Research statement
Background
'Kirisimasi' is a documentary series in the exhibition The Future of Our Kids – focussing on nuclear testing in the Pacific. The researcher’s work tells the story of the Fijian nuclear veterans who participated in Britain's nuclear testing program at Christmas Island and Malden Island in the 1950s. This photographic series continues Bolatagici’s research into the recruitment and commodification of Pacific military personnel in global war economies.
Contribution
The photographic series represents a documentation of three Fijian nuclear veterans as they prepare for participation in their first remembrance day event in Suva and Nausori in 2016. The photographs are exhibited alongside excerpts from a documentary film being produced in collaboration with Nic Maclellan. These works bring into focus the devaluing of Black and Brown bodies in the ongoing colonial project and centres the voices, stories and legacies of indigenous-led protest movements against nuclear testing in the moana oceania.
Significance
The exhibition was accompanied by an artist talk by Torika Bolatagici and Jane Chang Mi, and was reviewed by Lana Lopesi for critical art journal The Pantograph Punch, Dec, 2019.
Publication classification
JO1 Original Creative Works – Visual Art Work
Scale
NTRO Minor
Extent
12 x colour photographs on Platine fibre rag. 590 x 760mm
Editor/Contributor(s)
Gordon-Smith I
Event
'The Future of Our Kids'. Exhibition (2019 : Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery. Fiji)