Yaca 2.0 (2023)

Yaca 1.0 that featured at Metro Arts in 2022 was a short form montage work by myself and my sister and collaborator, Sereima Adimate. Yaca 2.0 that will feature at Counihan Gallery is a short form montage work by myself and my partner and collaborator, Bose Dakai. Both works mix my love for personal visual and family archive and visual storytelling. 

Love has been and always will be the place from which my practice begins and ends. Love for my family, my culture, my peoples, my friends, my vanua/fenua, my ancestors and myself.

Throughout the process of creating Yaca 1.0, I looked at stories of my saltwater namesake, the coconut crab, across Oceania.The coconut crab is the largest terrestrial anthropod in the world. We have much in common, yaca and I. We are nocturnal, we are land dwellers, we love shiny things, we do anything we need to eat, we are our own worse predator and we have a tendency to intimidate people through our sheer existence.

In Yaca 2.0, my partner and I are opening up about the birth of our second child, and how we handed the responsibility over to the grandparents, specifically my mum and my partner’s dad. My mother, Lesina Ateli-Ugavule, echoes throughout speaking on the names she chose, and the anchors they provide.

I’m thinking through what it is to embody the behaviours and aspirations of someone you have never met through their name, naming practices in Fijian and Tokelauan culture and the relationship through vanua/fenua that our names hold for us. I’m thinking through Torika’s invitation of ‘attunement with ourselves and each other’.

As always, I am grateful to all those who are willing to share their stories, their voices, their memories through my practice in the spirit of veilomani.