TE FANAU’A ’UNA ’UNA’ NĀ TE TUMU - THE SENTINELS, 2017 is a site specific continuous mural painting that spanned the 15,000 square feet (4,500 m2) walls of the 2nd floor galleries of the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA). The work was the setting of A Temporary Futures Institute, and exhibition curated by M HKA Head Curator Anders Kreuger, and Futurist Maya Van Leemput. The exhibition took Futurist theoretician James Dator’s four Futures narratives (Continued growth, Collapse, Transformation, and Discipline) as structural device for the exhibition, which would include artists, futurist, and host a Futurists’ conference in the exhibition spaces.
Just as Dator developed his Futurist thesis in Polynesia, at the University of Hawaii, I was interested in thinking about my own Polynesia and seeing how one could imagine the future from its signs. At M HKA, I used concepts and motifs present in my lexicon of signs that pertain to the current realities such as petroglyphs from the Marquesas islands, the breadfruit leaf made famous by the Mutiny on the Bounty book and films, French Polynesia as the site for France’s 30 years / 193 nuclear tests, and Epeli Hau’ofa’s Sea of Islands (to name a few). All of these elements became part of a composition that acted as visual environment and would unfold as an continuous landscape painting and diorama on the walls at M HKA.