APRIL 2024

Resurgence as Practice in the Sāmoan Diaspora: Photographs, Reconnection, and Reimagination

Caretaker: Olivia Palepoi

Talofa, everyone! My name is Olivia Palepoi and I am a member of the Samoan diaspora from Midvale, Utah. This project means so much to me and I thank generations in my family and my culture for making this possible. For some context, the installation was displayed as the place where I have learned the most - the many living rooms of my family members. This project is not mine but a culmination of knowledge passed in-between the past, present, and the future. Please read the artist statement below for an overview of the project and to view some of the installation pieces. As the first installation in the aLab, I can’t wait to see the many projects to come! May creativity be our guide as we remember and uncover regenerative ways of caring for each other! Fa’afetai, Liv.

ARTIST STATEMENT

This exhibit reflects on a transnational auto-ethnographic project focusing on Indigenous resurgence as a process of knowing through process, practice, action in the Samoan diaspora. Using photography, this project situates resurgence as an opportunity for diasporic members to re-think, re-imagine, and re-connect to ways of being that work outside settler colonial boundaries of existence. The photographs serve as a materialization of my family’s relationship with migration and US empire as anchors of memory to social relations and historical contexts. I emphasize how pictures provide an opportunity for descendants to intervene into the past to recognize our own roles in Indigenous dispossession. Overall, this project depicts the ways Samoan diasporic members can creatively envision liberatory futures through visual mediums.