Finding Rotuma in the Archives: Art, memory and a cultural revival

Rotuman artist Sofia Tekela Smith says her residency at Auckland Museum has become more than a creative project. It has turned into a personal journey through memory, ancestry, and identity.

Tekela-Smith is the 2026 recipient of the Matafatafa Aho Pacific Artist Residency, which supports Pacific artists in working with museum collections and developing new work shaped by Pacific histories and taonga.

“It’s such an amazing honour,” Tekela-Smith tells PMN News. “It feels like our ancestors are being well looked after.

“It appears that a lot of Rotumans that have been through the corridors of this museum have spoken our language, sang our songs, woven our mats and looked at our treasures.”

Inside the museum’s archives and collections, she has been working closely with material linked to Rotuma and wider Moana craft traditions.

For Tekela-Smith, it is not just research, it is recognition. “One of the first things I saw was when they were demounting a tofua, a Rotoman skirt that was made with apei (fine mat),” she said. “I had the pleasure of having a really good look at this beautiful weaving.”

Watch Sofia Tekela-Smith's full interview below.

The timing of the residency has added meaning. It runs alongside Gasav Ne Fäeag Rotuạm Ta - Rotuman Language Week, held from 10-16 May, which focuses on keeping language and cultural knowledge alive.

Tekela-Smith says this also connects to family. The opening of the weeklong celebration was held on Mother’s Day weekend, something she links to the role of women in passing down knowledge.

“My grandmothers and my mother's youngest sister were famed for their weaving, so I grew up sitting with my grandmother and the other women, watching them weave,” she says.

“Our identity revolved around the arts, we lived it through weaving, carving, dancing and hanutsu.”

She says those memories guide her work, which includes tefui garlands and body adornment using materials such as mother-of-pearl, pounamu, and black pearl.

Rotuma, a dependency of Fiji, is a small group of islands 650km north of Fiji with a population of about 2000 people. More than 1300 Rotumans now call New Zealand home, with most living in Auckland, according to the latest census.

As she digs through museum collections, Tekela-Smith is also revisiting how Rotuma has been shown, or overlooked, in history.

She points to the map created by Tahitian navigator Tupaia during Captain James Cook’s voyages as an example.

“If you study the map, you'll see that all the other islands are tiny, and he's written us as Orotuma, it’s huge,” she exclaims.

Tupaia's map, with 'Orotuma' pointed out. Photo/Rotuma Project Facebook page

“In most map books, you barely see Rotuma mentioned, and I have to stop myself from being a graffiti artist and drawing a dot on every map that I’ve come across.”

Li’omatua Dr Wanda Ieremia-Allan, Associate Curator for Documentary Heritage (Pacific Collections) at Auckland Museum, says the residency creates space for artists to work with collections linked to their own histories.

“Tekela-Smith brings a deeply considered material practice and strong research focus, and we look forward to seeing how their work activates these archival records,” she says in a statement.

For Tekela-Smith, who was raised by her grandparents in Pepjei before moving the New Zealand, the experience also reflects a wider shift in visibility for Rotuman people in Aotearoa.

“I remember in the 80s, nobody knew where Rotuma was, and now everywhere I go, I have people saying to me, ‘I know a Rotuman, are you related?’

“For a long time, 17 years, I didn’t hear Rotuman being spoken. It's so important for us in the diaspora to learn to speak this really incredibly hard language.”

As Rotuman Language Week continues, Tekela-Smith will be joined by podcaster Maluseu Monise from Saukama, Juju, for a public conversation at Auckland Museum on Rotuman creative practice.

“It’s so important to have people who keep that knowledge alive,” she said. “It is how we navigated our way through the ocean. It is constantly moving towards us. I’m so excited, and it’s an incredible time to be doing this.”

Kạp'ạki - To Embrace, will be held at the South Atrium, Auckland Museum, on Tuesday 12 May from 6pm-8pm.