Siva in Motion

Yuki Kihara’s art is layered in meanings and incorporates Western, Eastern and Sāmoan historic and contemporary references. Siva in Motion recalls the 19th-century stop-motion photographs of Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey, which captured humans and animals in several phases of movement.

Siva in Motion draws on layered cultural and art historical frameworks. Dressed in a Victorian mourning dress, Kihara assumes the fictitious character of 'Salome' while performing a taualuga – a traditional Siva Sāmoa (Sāmoan dance). Inspired by conversations with survivors of the 2009 Tsunami, Siva in Motion describes the movements of the wave which took the lives of more than 189 people in American Sāmoa, Sāmoa and Tonga. The artist has commented: ‘Siva in Motion also draws upon – and contributes to – the Sāmoan concepts of tā and vā: tā means to beat or to demarcate time through beats; and vā denotes the space between things or social space between people.’

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