Reki, Paraha and Nakas (From the Reclamation lineage)

Born in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville and currently based in Australia, artist and curator Taloi Havini is renowned for her multidisciplinary practice, which responds to the history and culture of Bougainville and her people’s deep connection to the land despite years of conflict and civil war.

'Reki, Paraha and Nakas (Reclamation)', 2022 is a major installation that celebrates and perpetuates the traditional land systems in Bougainville that are bound by their matrilineal structures, a system wherein all clan members inherit land from their maternal lineage and are tied to land through one’s own genealogy. Created specifically for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, this installation charts new territory in the artist’s practice, presenting what she describes as ‘matriarchal architectures’ cast in bronze and copper, which are situated within tonnes of sand on the ground that create an uninhabitable surface – in reference to the still-uncertain present. These elegant structures are reminiscent of the curved panels found in traditional and architectural forms in Bougainville like the marae tsuhana – sacred storage house. The forms are created through an intergenerational transmission of knowledge, and embedded in them is an encyclopaedia of land, plant, animal, cultural and social knowledge.

Attemps to destabilise dominant narratives of place and colonial practices of documentation are extended in a blown-up detail of a Bougainville map. This map was inherited by Havini’s father who used it during his years of exile in Sydney and whose notations offer an Indigenous and embedded knowledge of the land. Expanded across the wall, the bodies of our audiences are placed in relation to the locations and grounds it documents.

– Ane Tonga, Curator, Pacific Art, 2022

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