A Photo exhibition by Greg Semu
May 3 - June 2
Mangere Community Arts Centre
Greg Semu is recognized internationally as an important new Samoan artist. Surprisingly, he is a New Zealander, and is based in Auckland. Born 1971 to Samoan parents who had immigrated to New Zealand as small children and had met and married here, Greg grew up thinking of himself as a ‘normal’ New Zealander. His strict third-generation Mormon upbringing and the painfully international atmosphere created by his parents at home (they only ever spoke English at home) reinforced this view. But there was another world outside, one which treated him as an alien: as someone who was, somehow, ‘different’.
This led to the discovery that there was whole another heritage that he had – his Samoan heritage, and he has devoted most of his adult life trying to rediscover that heritage, through the medium of his art: photography. But it wasn’t easy: visits to Samoa led to another sort of alienation: he was seen as an outsider there too, despites attempts to immerse himself into the Samoan ethos by submitting to the painful and deeply spiritual pe’a: The tattooed genealogies and the histories of the Samoan people now armor his flesh like the wings of a flying fox.
In search of a home, Greg eventually found it in the anonymity of a squalid studio in Paris, when he went there on an art grant. Initially however, he felt cut-off from the source of his inspiration: the villages of Samoa. But delving into his past body of work photographing his people in Samoa, he resurrected it into a new oeuvre, painting over them in gold and sepia: The Gold Icon’s, for which he is best known internationally.
He has used this medium to express his disquiet and rebellion at the religious colonization of the people of the Pacific, and other forms of colonization of the mind, body and spirit. His redemption series caused a minor controversy when it was exhibited first at the Biennale d’art contemporain at Lyon in 2001.
His other well known works are his self-portraits of his tattooed body, which gives the phrase ‘body of work’ a whole new meaning.
His prestigious new assignment is creating a mural for the controversial new museum in Paris: Musée du Quai Branly. A brainchild of the French president Jacques Chirac, it was named unassumingly after the area in which it is located, on the banks of the Seine beside the Eiffel Tower, after the other names: “The museum of primitive arts” and “The museum of early indigenous arts of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania” were considered inappropriate.
In this retrospective of his entire oeuvre in the Mangere Community Arts Centre, starting from 1990 when he started publicly exhibiting his photography to his latest works in progress, we can get to see the development and growth of an outstanding photo artist.
Greg Semu took some time off from his busy international schedule to speak to Smart As! about his art.
Can you tell us a bit more about your photo exhibition in Mangere Community Arts Centre?
This is a community based arts centre, so it is not funded very well. So there’s no budget for the artist, so what I propose to do is a retrospective of my commercial and non-commercial work over 10 years, recycling tear sheets from magazines, posters, test strips, and even putting in my poetry and drawings of ideas of photos before I made them. What I am hoping to show is the creative process behind the making of a photograph. So it is like an open diary more than being an exhibition for showing master works for sale. The good thing about this is that emphasis is not on sales, it is an opportunity to go back to the community. A lot of people don’t know what kind of work I do and being an open diary, I can show them my personal and private work as well as my commercial work and magazine work
(from the Gold Icon series)
Will your popular ‘Gold Icon’ series form a part of this exhibition?
What I am thinking of doing is more like a big wall: A giant collage of all my photos and test strips, test prints and posters. What I think I will do is customize some of the images on the wall with gold icons on the montage. Then I'll go in and paint a few of them gold in the collage. The great thing about the Gold Icons is it is beautiful imagery and also makes an important statement about something I feel strongly about: How religion is a big part of the colonization of indigenous peoples. But it is also for the esthetic beauty of it.
Does the name of this exhibition have a special significance?
I made this title up because I had been traveling a lot, couch crashing around the world, and the title is a reference to being nomadic and more mysterious.
By the way, I’ve now invited some more people to exhibit with me - two family members, who are sisters they are: Evotia Tamua Thompson and Eimi Tamua
Because the space was so big I couldn’t do it all myself, so I invited my cousins to exhibit with me.
The second working title of the exhibition is “Photography, a family affair”. Because we are all relatives by blood, and our bloodlines come from the same village in Samoa.
Where are you based now? Paris, New York or Auckland?
I am living between Paris and Auckland, but I am mostly based in Auckland now. I just won an artist residency, and the residency is in Paris from July till Oct of 2007 and so I have been very fortunate to live between these two cities
Does the Mangere Arts Center have a special meaning for you?
I spent many years growing up in South Auckland and South Auckland is poverty stricken: it is working class and lower class New Zealand: Polynesian and Maori and I have a chance to be involved in the community and show that you can have a viable existence as an artist. That the arts is a great way to express yourself and that there are other alternative ways of living other than being just poverty stricken.... Not that I have any money or anything (laughs).
Poverty is a disease of the mind. A false psychology that sabotages the soul internally. Just because you are lacking in material and financial wealth does not mean you are worthless, undesirable and helpless. It does mean you have to be more creative, more resourceful and more forgiving and charitable. You do need to be more conscious and you need too have a bigger vision of harmonious and fruitful future.
In early interviews, you talked about your rebellion at what was done to your people, your anger at colonialism and religious colonization. Do you still feel like that, or are you reconciled now?
I am more reconciled with it but that is because history moves on. Historically it has been a big influence in affecting the psychology of the Pacific and non European peoples. I am no longer like a rebel or politically driven about it any more. Now I realize it has happened, and we have more of an understanding of it and when you understand it more, you are no longer affected by it. I mean you become more conscious of how it is affecting you. I have become more conscious of how colonialism, and particularly religious colonization
has influenced myself and my family and how the tradition or how the psychology has changed over the years and I have become more conscious of it.
Now I have a better understanding of it and why I am thinking this way and not just react without knowing why I think this way.
Colonization has offered lots of good things as well .We have lots to offer each other, positive stuff. I am trying not to focus on the negative, look more on the positive.
Was your earlier work a retaliation against colonialism, or an attempt to go back to your roots?
It was combination of both. Firstly, I was retaliating against colonial pressure and also I was retaliating against the social stigma attached to Polynesian alternative culture: the assumed superiority of the colonizer. The superiority of colonization is what I was rebelling against. At the same time, being alienated within my own culture, I was trying to establish my connection with my roots. But that too was quiet strange because of the displacement over the years, through immigration. I was born here in NZ, my parents had immigrated. Just being born here, that immediately affected my psychology, whether I am conscious of it or not. And when I go back to Samoa, they say ‘you are not from here’. So I am in between the two cultures. I think I am more interested in building bridges between the two and building a new identity with that and moving forward with that
But you must have gone back to Samoa many times now. Do you feel better accepted there now?
I haven’t been to Samoa for a while now. The last time I was there was 2001. My ties are stronger with NZ, obviously because I was born and raised here. The funny thing is that in NZ people will look at you and they see you have a different color and they tell you that ‘No, you are something else’. So it is kind of like a reflection: It is like I am identifying myself from the reflection of other people telling me how I am supposed to be, and that is quite confusing
Perhaps you feel a better identification with the non Caucasian New Zealanders? The Maoris, for instance?
I have spent years trying to find a people to affiliate myself with. Now I am just trying to feel solidarity within myself as a person and that I am a mixture of all of these things. Also, it is an evolution. There’s a new generation out there. Living overseas has also helped to realize that psychology begins within oneself. Of course, I try not to get too infatuated with wanting to be an ‘International Citizen’ (laughs)...to be an artist of the world (laughs).
You feel alienation everywhere. Is there a place in the world, where you get the feeling ‘This is Home’. Perhaps not in Auckland, not in Samoa …anywhere in the world.
I do feel a strong connection with Paris (laughs) I lived there 4 years...I had this thought last year...I was there December to January of this year...and it came to me that I haven’t found my home, and I that am still looking for my home. But the closest thing to home was living in Paris. Paris is a cosmopolitan metropolitan city and it feels really global. With NZ it feels really isolated... Samoa too feels isolated. In France I feel really connected with the world. I feel: this is Paris and the culture is French, but because it is a modern city, there are real contemporary modern vibes that are really global. It is also that Polynesian culture is really exotic there. There, you could grow and develop whereas I feel here in NZ we have stereotypes already in place and it is hard to outgrow it. In NZ I feel this generation is outgrowing these stereotypes that are in place. There is a lot of resistance and I think it is changing very quickly and hopefully for the better.
I’ve managed to exhibit every year in France since 2000 and they really appreciate the work I am creating and I guess it’s because it is exotic and because I am marrying religious iconography with Pacific iconography, and the French don’t really know much about the Pacific.
Of course, the French do have an understanding of the Pacific, and it is a real French colonial attitude. The French Polynesia is really colonized so much more than some other places. From what I can make out, they really have a negative attitude towards the French Polynesian colony. But NZ and Samoa are independent so they do not immediately have a stereotypical understanding of it. They are open to new ideas because they haven’t got fixed ideas. They are very keen to learn more. They are open to be entertained by what is to them ‘This other Pacific place’.
(Capatilist dictator from the Redemption series)
Can you tell me some more about your piece ‘Capitalist Dictator’, which represents a man in a crucifix-like position surrounded by Samoan and religious iconography.
This was in Paris. I was reworking some prints that I had. The original work is a crucifix, and I reworked it. It was about religious dictatorship in the name of capitalism. The Christian churches are very wealthy, rich institutions. Also, at the time in France there was a lot of turmoil, a lot of rioting. And I thought, this is like a police state! That was influencing me too. France is a very rich country, but it is full of poverty. Very bizarre. There is a contradiction there. All of these things were influencing me.
Do you have any new works on show?
No finished pieces, just works in progress.
What is the direction of your latest work?
I am still doing classical themes. Right now I am doing a series of photographs on San Sebastian. He is the guy with all the arrows sticking out of his body. He was a rebellious Christian saint. He rebelled against the Church, and to make an example of him, they tied him to a tree and shot arrows through him.
It is quite obscure but it is a very beautiful image. I am getting actors and models and I am making theatrical recreations on photographs. I am currently making a new image for the Musée du Quai Branly, which is the new museum in Paris. The work I am making for them is a fictitious battle scene between the colonizers and the natives in NZ in 1800.
Do you have a vision for your artistic growth, in five years, in ten years? Is there new medium you would like to explore?
In the next 5 years, I want to have many books published on my photography. To have mastered my vision of the still image and be fluent in this secret visual language of photography. To be able to communicate with a global audience and to be a great, influential and INSPIRATIONAL artist to my generation and tomorrow’s generation. I would like to be considered a revolutionary provocative, conscious and controversial photographer offering food for thought to the masses or to the few.
Would it be like combining moving images and music of Samoa?
It is one of my goals to continue documenting the progress of Samoan culture, because tourism is making a big influence on the Pacific. It is not the main industry yet but it is making an increasingly bigger impact.
I would like to work with other writers and script writers as I am trying to shoot short films and experimental art films. Ultimately I would like to be able to make a video. At the end I would like to be financially rewarded for my artwork. And I would like to continue traveling. I like the vision that I will continue to live between France, NZ and the Pacific
But that is an excellent question, and I need to keep developing a vision. Right now I am only thinking of the next six months. I would like to just continue my photography, that’s for sure. People find it funny but I do commercial work as well. I have this idea that I want to marry the two. I want to be a commercial art photographer. Either you are a commercial photographer or an art photographer. And I ask, why can’t you be a commercial art photographer? That’s my vision. I want to still be creative and be rewarded not only spiritually but also financially. But money is not the driving force. To create works that will still be creative, thought provoking and beautiful to look at, that is the goal.
