09 Jun 2014
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has recently acquired Siva in Motion (2012) by Shigeyuki Kihara: a silent dance video that conveys the wisdom and the beauty of Samoan dance while simultaneously echoing the destructive waves of the 2009 Pacific tsunami.
Shigeyuki Kihara, an interdisciplinary artist of Samoan descent, based between New Zealand and Samoa, joins a list of prominent contemporary artists whose works have recently been acquired by the museum, including Roni Horn (USA), Choi Jeonghwa (Korea), Mitra Tabrizian (Iran); and masters Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Pablo Picasso.
Nancy Thomas, LACMA’s Senior Deputy Director, says that the acquisition came about due to the museum’s strong interest in international contemporary art as well as time-based media. “We have consistently looked to the strategies used by contemporary artists to interpret more traditional forms of artistic production, both by placing works within more traditional galleries and by working with artists on permanent collection gallery installations.”
Originally commissioned by the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki of New Zealand, Siva in Motion (2012) depicts a silent dance where Kihara appears dressed in the guise of ‘Salome’ – a ghost from the past performing the ancient Samoan dance form of the taualuga. The choreography describes the Pacific tsunami of September 2009, which took the lives of more than 189 people in American Samoa, Samoa, and northern Tonga. The video work also makes reference to motion photography in the 19th century, where the multiple fading figures echo the movements of the tsunami waves.
Alongside her award-winning silent video work Galu Afi: Waves of Fire (2012), Siva in Motion (2012) addresses issues of cultural resilience in the face of frequent natural disasters in Samoa – which makes it both timeless and also utterly current.
Siva in Motion (2012) has caught the eye of contemporary art museums internationally since it was first premiered at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. It is featured in two group exhibitions in 2014: at Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (Belgium) and Kurumaya Museum of Art (Japan) - where both exhibitions have an entire room dedicated to a single-channel, life-size projection of the work.
Visitors to LACMA can view their new acquisition Siva in Motion (2012), which is currently installed in the Art of the Pacific Gallery, until September 2014.
Kihara’s works and performances have been presented internationally at the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2002), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (solo exhibition, 2008), Auckland Triennial (2009) and Sakahàn Quinquennial (2013) among others, and will be included in the upcoming Daegu Photo Biennale in September 2014.
For media enquiries, more information or to request an image, please contact:
Shigeyuki Kihara, artist and curator/producer
Email: duskygeisha@yahoo.co.nz
Shigeyuki Kihara is represented by Milford Galleries Dunedin, New Zealand
Notes for media:
About Siva in Motion: Originally commissioned and premiered at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki of New Zealand, Siva in Motion (2012) depicts a silent dance where Kihara performs the ancient Samoan dance form of the taualuga where the choreography describes the Pacific tsunami of September 2009, which took the lives of more than 189 people in American Samoa, Samoa, and northern Tonga. You can watch the ‘Making of Siva in Motion’ here: www.vimeo.com
Recent career highlights in the USA for Kihara includes completion of a six-month residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York; a solo exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) and the recent acquisition of her work by the Allan Memorial Art Museum (AMAM), Oberlin College in Ohio.
In New Zealand, Kihara presented concurrent solo exhibitions at Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures and City Gallery Wellington in the context of the New Zealand International Arts Festival in February 2014. Her mid-career survey exhibition ‘Shigeyuki Kihara: Undressing the Pacific’ curated and toured by the Hocken Collections of the University of Otago, was recently presented at the Wallace Arts Centre in Auckland in March 2014 and will tour to Te Manawa Museum of Art, Science and History, Palmerston North, opening on 19 June 2014. More venues will be announced in 2015.
Upcoming highlights:
- Co-presenter at an international contemporary art forum hosted by the Royal Museum for Central Africa and Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, June 2014.
- Presenter at the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Art Educators (ANZAAE) 2014 Conference in Auckland NZ, July 2014.
- Presenter at the Samoa Conference III hosted by the National University of Samoa, August 2014.
- Participating artist in the Daegu Photo Biennale in Korea, September 2014.
Links:
About LACMA:
Since its inception in 1965, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has been devoted to collecting works of art that span both history and geography, in addition to representing Los Angeles's uniquely diverse population. Today LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection that includes over 120,000 objects dating from antiquity to the present, encompassing the geographic world and nearly the entire history of art. Among the museum’s strengths are its holdings of Asian art, Latin American art, ranging from pre-Columbian masterpieces to works by leading modern and contemporary artists; and Islamic art, of which LACMA hosts one of the most significant collections in the world. A museum of international stature as well as a vital part of Southern California, LACMA shares its vast collections through exhibitions, public programs, and research facilities that attract over a million visitors annually, in addition to serving millions through digital initiatives, such as online collections, scholarly catalogues, and interactive engagement at lacma.org. Situated in Hancock Park on over 20 acres in the heart of Los Angeles, LACMA is located between the ocean and downtown.
Location: 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036. www.lacma.org
Press Contact: press@lacma.org or phone 323-857-6522
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