Solesolevaki: A Fijian family's story of connection through art

By Atutahi Potaka-Dewes, PMN

One Fijian family living in Aotearoa has created an art exhibition that expresses their identity, culture, and connection to the motherland.

The exhibition is called Solesolevaki, a means for reciprocity, and in Fijian, it reflects the process of mutual understanding and cooperation.

With support from Tautai Pacific Arts Trust, the exhibit has been curated by Vasemaca Ema Tavola, who is the director and founder of Vunilagi Vou Limited, but it also sits as a "collaborative expression" of her family's link to Dravuni, Fiji.

Tavola spoke with PMN about the exhibition and its exploration of the concept of solesolevaki as a tool to enable connection and intergenerational "cultural transmission" across her immediate family.

"I've opted to work with my parents, my sister and her children, my child, and all of those who are interwoven into our family, and thinking about our brother and his six children too who are not here in New Zealand.

"Solesolevaki is an expression of my family.

"We've worked together to make an exhibition where we've all reflected on the ways that we experience our Fijianess in our everyday lives. This idea of what cultural transmission looks like in our lived experiences."

The exhibition is part of Fijian Language Week - Macawa ni Vosa Vakaviti, which is celebrated from 6-12 October across Aotearoa. The theme is 'Vakamareqeta na Vosa Vakaviti - Nurture and sustain the Fijian language.'

Enacting solesolevaki to serve a community

Tavola has been curating for 20 years with a special focus on uplifting Pacific arts, BIPOC history, activism, indigenous feminisms, decolonisation, and motherhood.

She founded Fresh Ōtara Gallery and has been operating the shapeshifting studio and consultancy space Vunilagi Vou since 2019.

Tavola said being a South Auckland-based Fijian means projects specific to her people were rare and so she "pivoted" to start prioritising her community.

"Last year, I had a real pivot in my practice. I decided I didn't really want to operate in the art world the way that I had for my whole career and I really wanted to divert my energy and my interest back to my people."

"All of my work has been about serving Polynesian arts community needs for my whole career," Tavola said.

"So basically, the reason I wanted to make this show is because I wanted to really delve back into what's important to my identity as a Fijian."

Tavola is studying towards her Masters of applied indigenous knowledge at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa which sparked her interest to explore the Fijian principles that "guide her practice".

"And one of the principles is reciprocity. Reciprocity is something, of course in so many Pacific cultures, that's so embedded in how we are and how we are to each other - in Fijian there isn't a word for reciprocity.

"In conversation with my father, we discussed the idea that solesolevaki - the idea of working together, give and take, and mutuality - makes it feel like it's the applied practice of reciprocity."

Visually translating a concept of reciprocity

The family descend from Mataqali Navusalevu, a sub-tribe of Natusara on Dravuni Island in the Kadavu province.

Many pieces in the exhibition have layers of history interlinked with her parents' storytelling and interpreted through the creative vision of every member involved, a process Tavola said "liberates" her from conventional curatorial practices.

She also says this project probably wouldn't stand in other spaces, but adds that Tautai Arts Gallery has fully opened its space to her family's "creative freedom".

The installation process is a "design as you go" basis so she's not sure what the final product will look like.

With painting directly onto walls, tea towels adorned with her niece's drawings, Tavola's beloved paddle board named Raluve has been hung up - layers that viewers need to experience in person to fully understand.

By bringing in the whole family, they're all accountable for this project and it has created a sense of investment, which Tavola says she's never seen in her family before.

"No one can opt out," she jokes.

"But also my parents, who are both in their 70s, it's a real recognition that there is this passing on of knowledge that has to happen, especially in diaspora NZ we can lose it, and then what do we have? We have a real void in our hearts.

"It feels good to do this and reconnect, strengthen, and fortify the bonds we have with each other and our village in Dravuni."

A family first becomes a legacy

Having lived in Aotearoa for 20 years and raising her daughter has come with a deficit of physical connection to ancestral family and land.

"What does the knowledge that we've absorbed in our lives translate into our lives in New Zealand?"

Fijians comparatively are a smaller demographic of our Pacific communities. She says you'll often find many Fijians tend to migrate solo or in small numbers.

Solesolevaki has also provided an opportunity for a family reunion as Tavola is the only Auckland-based member of her family.

"We are gonna have four generations of my family here in Auckland for the first time celebrating together on Fiji Day and celebrating this exhibition which is really this expression of all of us, not just one.

"It's also dad's birthday."

Solesolevaki opens on Fiji Day - Thursday, 10 October at Tautai Arts Gallery on Karangahape Road.

-This article was first published by PMN.