Phase 2 ʻFanua (Land)ʻ 2021
Part of ‘サ–モアのうた (Sāmoa no uta) A song about Sāmoa’ (2019 – 2023) by Yuki Kihara
Fanua: The Sāmoan Aidscape
By Masami Tsujita
Driving along Beach Road from the landmark Clock Tower to the Apia port, one may suddenly feel transported to Japan when passing by the new Vaisigano Bridge. For people who have visited Japan, the scene might remind them of travels there, and wonder why this bridge was built in Sāmoa. The 75 metre, three-span hollow bridge was funded by a Japanese government’s grant scheme at a cost of SAT$44 million (approximately NZD$ 24 million) and opened in August 2020. It replaced an old bridge originally built in 1953, which was seriously damaged over decades by flood waters, cyclones, and debris. The Vaisigano Bridge project was part of the Sāmoa National Tropical Cyclone Plan, which aimed to reconstruct the country’s key infrastructure and increase the preparedness and resilience against tropical cyclones. The design of the new bridge was proposed by a Japanese construction company under the supervision of Japan International Cooperation Agency and endorsed by the government of Sāmoa. The structural safety, durability in saline atmosphere, and environmental impacts were carefully considered in designing the bridge. It was built 1.5 metres higher than the old one to prevent large debris from blocking the flow of river during heavy rains and floods, and to reduce environmental impacts on nearby communities.
The new Vaisigano Bridge may reduce environmental damage, but it has significantly altered the landscape of Vaisigano. The design of the bridge—comprising pedestrian footpaths, streetlights, and road signs—resemble a typical bridge in Japan. Ironically, this Japan-oriented structure bridge was built next to the iconic Sheraton Aggie Grey’s Hotel and Bungalow, one of the first hotels to make Sāmoa known to the outside world. Aggie Grey, a local entrepreneur, opened her hotel in 1933. The hotel housed the film crew of Return to Paradise in the 1950s and became a popular gathering place for travellers in the South Pacific, including famous Hollywood stars like Marlon Brando and Gary Cooper. It became part of the Sheraton Hotel group in 2016 and is currently owned by a Chinese investor. The hotel management, however, has attempted to retain its historic ambiance. Regrettably, the new Vaisigano Bridge disturbs both the pathway to the hotel’s entrance and the historic setting of the hotel that has represented Sāmoa’s tourism for decades.
The new bridge exemplifies how social and economic infrastructure projects funded by foreign aid have transformed the living space of Sāmoa, intentionally or otherwise. Borrowing the suffix ‘-scape’ from Arjun Appadurai, I coined the term ‘Aidscape’ to refer to physical and psychological landscapes that are altered vastly by foreign development aid. Yuki Kihara, who will represent Aotearoa New Zealand at the upcoming Venice Biennale, alerts viewers to the rising waves of change and the altering power of foreign aid in the Sāmoan Aidscape in her new work titled Fanua.
Fanua, the Sāmoan word for land, is the second installation of Kihara’s five-year project titled サーモアのうた Sāmoa no uta (A Song about Sāmoa). It portrays past and present intersections of Sāmoa, Japan, and Oceania. In the first installation titled Vasa, meaning open ocean, Kihara depicted the ocean as a connective body between the distinct cultures of Sāmoa and Japan, which are otherwise geographically and emotionally distant. Fanua, on the other hand, exposes anger, sorrow, frustration, anxiety, and sense of urgency at the devastation and unsustainability of rapid changes by external forces in the Sāmoan Aidscape. Tradition, histories, and white beaches, once the mainstays of the tourism development, are now threatened by sea level rise and climate change. Mangroves, fruit bats, and the manumea (the tooth-billed pigeon only found in Sāmoa)—symbols of Sāmoa’s healthy environment—wait to be bulldozed for further development. A bull in the centre kimono symbolises the altering power of development, looking down on the Virgin Mary statue, which represents Sāmoa’s hope and justice, being swept away by the waves of change brought by development. Kihara explains the installation is a ‘forewarning against Sāmoa’s speculative future that favours economic development and globalization at the expense of traditional knowledge system and the local environment’. Fanua is a powerful, daring, and provocative installation that questions where Sāmoa is heading.
The Sāmoa no uta project has five installations, the first four comprising five distinct kimono made of siapo. The final project will combine all 20 siapo kimono presented on mannequins. Kimono, which literally means ‘thing to wear’ or simply ‘clothing’, is a traditional Japanese garment that became popular during the Heian period (794-1185). In Japan today, people rarely wear kimono in everyday life except for special occasions such as weddings and tea ceremonies. Siapo, more widely known as tapa, is a barkcloth made by hand from the paper mulberry tree. It is a traditional fabric once used for a variety of purposes including clothing, ceremonial garments, shrouds, and exchange gift in Sāmoa and other Polynesian islands. More recently, it has become a handicraft for tourists. While kimono and siapo are culturally distinctive, both have been repeatedly misrepresented by the outside world due in part to confusing authenticity with exoticism. For example, factors that need consideration in coordinating kimono—type, colour, material and pattern of kimono, age and marital status of the person wearing it, and season and occasion to wear—are often ignored by non-Japanese who are not aware of the existence of these rules. Siapo, on the other hand, has become an icon of Polynesian cultures that exhibits the exotic ‘Otherness’ but it has lost its original functionality. Only an artist, like Kihara, who can challenge the nuances of culture and art forms, would dare to use these two well-known but often misrepresented materials to represent the intersection of traditions, and the interplay of two ideologies—development and environment.
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Yuki Kihara, born in Sāmoa to a Japanese father and a Sāmoan mother, has lived in Sāmoa, Japan, and New Zealand and travelled all over the world. Her lived experiences in different cultural and ideological spaces have moulded her into an exceptional interdisciplinary artist with cosmopolitan approaches displayed in her most recent artwork Fanua.