Tawale began creating performance works at art school in Melbourne in the early 2000s. These works used animation and green-screen technologies to allow her to inhabit different pop culture types. Her decision to focus on self-portraiture signals her ongoing commitment to encouraging a wider understanding of the Pacific diaspora experience. Tawale’s work references mainstream popular culture, and her process of image-making humorously exposes the use of stereotypes to make room for inclusiveness. This allows for an appreciation of the ways in which marginalised individuals not only exist within cultures that exclude them, but how they resist and transcend their circumstances.

In Rollergirl 2004, the artist has a teased-out afro hairstyle and wears costume jewellery as she suggestively sucks on an icy pole to a soundtrack of 1980s electronic music. In the background, images of phallus-shaped rockets launch as part of a nuclear attack. One of the most overtly feminist and political of the artist’s works, it speaks to the concept of both Pacific Islands and Pacific Islander women being constructed as sites of colonial and militarised penetration. The final scene captures the artist slowing down and turning to watch the drama unfolding behind her, and hints at the complexities involved for those who live in the Pacific diaspora, as they navigate their position as both victims and witnesses of violence.