Mother-daughter recorded lockdown experience in traditional Tongan tapa art ^Featured

Sulieti Fieme’a Burrows and her daughter Tui Emma Gillies will showcase 28 contemporary pieces of tapa paintings in Voyagers: The Niu World at the Karangahape Rd gallery on February 19.

Their work, of which 18 pieces are new and includes a large painting of masked families, reflects on their journey navigating a world with Covid-19.

Burrows and Gilles use tapa or ngatu, made from the pounded inner bark of a mulberry tree, as their canvas, and Indian ink or umea red earth ink from Falevai village in Tonga to bring their images to life.

Burrows learnt tapa-making from her mother at Falevai village on Vava’u in Tonga. It was from her that she also learnt how to weave, sew, bake and make kahoa heilala (garland).

When she migrated to New Zealand in 1978, Burrows took a break from crafts to raise her family but took it up again a few years later, selling plus-sized lingerie she’d made at the Ōtara markets.

“She’s always been good with her hands, at everything she does,” Gilles said.

The exhibition is the first for the year at the Tautai Pacific Art Gallery.

Gilles was surrounded by tapa growing up. She remembers her bedroom in Manurewa was covered in her grandmother’s tapa, like “being in a womb.”

“It just made sense and natural that I picked it up, I just knew it and ever since I was five years old, I was doodling on tapa,” Gilles said.

“The very first visuals I received were the kupesi (design) on the ngatu (cloth) that my grandmother did. I was influenced and inspired by mum, she always had the tapa and materials around so there was always that medium to explore.”

The show will be the second time the mother-daughter team will have collaborated in an exhibition.

This will be the second time the duo will collaborate since 2014 at the Fresh Gallery in Ōtara.

Burrows said her favourite piece in the show is the kaingoa tokolahi (extended family) which is a painting of a family with tapa-patterned face masks, bordered by traditional tapa design that took five months to complete.

The exhibition will also feature a special portrait of Burrows that Gilles created on Falevai tapa.

“Mum has the patience to work on this intricate details, I don’t, and she makes it look so easy. Everything that I know of tapa making, I learnt from her,” Gilles said.

A total of 28 contemporary pieces of tapa paintings will be exhibited, including portraits of people wearing tapa-patterned face masks.

She said creating art on tapa is very personal. In Pacific culture, tapa or ngatu is highly valued and used at special occasions.

“It’s a part of our lives, we walk on it, wear it, put it between the mattresses to keep it flat, you gift it.

“So to have it away from that traditional setting but still including it, and having it in a contemporary space – this is from the islands, from our ancestors – it’s saying that we belong up there too.

“We’re gallery worthy, it’s like gold, it’s more valuable than canvas to me because you’re working with something that has its own personality.”

- Stuff