Projection on Tapa Cloth: 2025 – Feb 2026 Completed for Materiality of Time Exhibition 2026

The making and the story of Tapa’Stry – One of the most beautiful pieces made with so much love and care.

Digital Animation projected onto Tapacloth
(2000mm x 2000mm)
📍TAPA’STRY IS A PORTMANTEAU
Tapa – Barkcloth of the Pacific – The anchor to my work that grounds me.
Stry – speaks to herstories & my stories through digital mediums.
The digital storytelling through material culture grounded within a future focused practice. The work centres on the creation of tapa, the substrate that will be an anchor for digital narratives. It is the surface that holds material cultural presence, while the primary focus of the work exists in its digital activation.

The animation is designed within a spherical composition that represents the vast Pacific Ocean and the spaces between our islands. The depth within the animation evokes the passing of space and time, reflecting the enduring connections that bind us to our ancestors and those who have come before us. Constantly in motion, the
sphere mirrors the rhythms of the ocean where past, present, and future exist in continuous dialogue.

A cognitive map — has been my way of remembering. It visualizes my journey of piecing together genealogy, migration, cultural practice, and identity through the unearthing of family histories. As I navigate between places, knowledge systems, and ways of making, the work becomes a living record of orientation—continually locating myself in relation to where my story began and where it continues to unfold.