Exhibition reimagines Tongan cultural practices

Queer Tongan-Australian artist Adriana Māhanga Lear launches her ‘Fafangu: To Awaken’ exhibition at the Māngere Arts Centre on Saturday.

The exhibition is part of Lear’s PhD research, which explores Tongan concepts around sound, death, and culture, with a particular focus on the fangufangu [nose flute].

“It’s based on my PhD research project, which I’ve done over the past four and a half years and that was looking into Fafangu to awaken as a musical instrument however also its role as a vaka in our concepts and practices around sound and how we use sound in daily life and also in our practices to do with Pulotu and Hikuleo, the goddess of Pulotu,” Lear says.

“There was a lot of exciting knowledge and skills that I was able to engage with through the project, and the creative exhibition is really a manifestation of those explorations coming under the umbrella of our Tongan arts.”

According to a press release, the exhibition engages with three Tongan art forms: tufunga (material arts), nimamea’a (fine arts), and faiva (performance arts).

It interrogates colonial legacies and reawakens ancestral knowledge through rituals, including fakataktōfā (a ritual for awakening chiefs) and various ancestral sound practices.

The exhibition features performances by local artists that showcase Tongan concepts of mana (spiritual power) and tapu (sacred restrictions), highlighting themes of social justice, decolonisation, and indigenous self-determination.

“I grew up playing classical music. I was interested in how our Tongan music and wider Moana Oceanian music have been notated in Western notation and what is kind of missed in doing that,” Lear says.

“I was really interested in how I could have one piece that kind of indigenises the Western music notation system in one of my compositions, and then I have the kupesi which I’ve created as a kind of Tongan notation of Tongan music,”

“All of my works engage with existing ancestral practices particularly through my own lineage and wider and then using that as a platform to innovate and have a talanoa [discussion] with the past ancestral practices reflecting on our cultural experiences today,” Lear says.

I was interested in how our Tongan music and wider Moana Oceanian music have been notated in Western notation and what is kind of missed in doing that,” Lear says. Photo/Facebook/Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.

The exhibition will run throughout the Pride Festival in Auckland, providing an intersection of cultural and queer identities.