Yuki Kihara took her alter ego Salome from an 1886 photograph titled Samoan half caste by New Zealand colonial photographer Thomas Andrew. Clad in Victorian ourning black, Salome’s unforgettable spectral presence is informed by Kihara’s own xperiences as a Sāmoan-Japanese person who is also Fa‘afafine, a term used in Indigenous āmoan society to describe someone who lives ‘in the manner of a woman’. Free from binary narratives, Salome occupies the Vā, a realm separated from time and space, in order to critique and reframe the impacts of colonisation. Roman Catholic Church, Apia and After Tsunami Galu Afi, Lalomanu were made in Sāmoa following the devastation of Cyclone Evan. With her back to us, Salome pulls our gaze to the ruined church and out to the open sea. Bearing witness to this recent tragedy, and Sāmoa’s history of loss through colonisation, she looks to the future. In Conveyance of Time (on the wall to your left), Salome is not one, but many. In flowing black crinoline, she moves through history and place like a queen on a chess board. In her arms are objects gathered from across time – an ava bowl, bible, navigational chart, the moon and Jupiter – carried as guides for the days to come.

(Dummies & Doppelgängers, 2 November 2024 – 23 March 2025)