The touring version of this exhibition features a curatorial selection of the works from the larger Te Papa exhibition in 2019. The four photographers are:

• New Zealand photographer Mark Adams, who has followed Sāmoan tattooing families since the late 1970s, documenting the many and varied contexts for their work
• Sāmoan Greg Semu, who began making his striking self-portraits in the 1990s, documenting his 25-year identity journey as a tattooed man
• John Agcaoili, who was commissioned by the Japanese American National Museum to photograph the contemporary work of the present generation of Sāmoan tattooists for the exhibition Tatau: Marks of Polynesia (2016)
• Angela Tiatia, who is an artist whose moving image work on the female malu malutraditional tattoo for womenMāori | Sāmoan innovatively explores the relationship between the female body as a fetishized object and her identity as a Sāmoan woman.

The exhibition is based on the scholarship developed for the Te Papa Press book Tatau: A History of Sāmoan Tattooing (2019)

Touring schedule

Hosting enquiries

Jake Yocum
Touring Exhibition Manager
Telephone: 021595092
Email: touringexhibitions@tepapa.govt.nz