Latai Taumoepeau considers herself a Punake, the Tongan word for an artist whose work centres on the body. Drawing on dancing skills learnt from family members in Tonga, as well as visits to nightclubs on Gadigal land in the Eora Nation (Sydney), Taumoepeau uses her body’s connection to ancient genealogies to draw traditions knowledge and values into the present.

Taumoepeau's work addresses the dangers experienced by Pacific peoples today – specifically the immediate and devastating effects of climate change. Using her own body in performance and video works, she evokes the interdependent relationship of Pacific people with their environment. In Repatriate 2015, the artist, who wears a life vest and floaties, is inside a glass tank desperately trying to perform a tau‘olunga (Tongan dance) as the enclosure slowly fills up with water. Taumoepeau’s increasingly strained efforts to control her movements against the force of the water highlights the labour required of Pacific peoples in the face of rising sea levels and catastrophic weather events.

In The Last Resort 2020, the idyllic environments in which Westerners like to holiday have become wastelands, reclaimed from rising waters by sandbags full of rubbish. Taumoepeau and her maternal cousin Taliu Aloua, who is culturally understood as her fa‘etangata (caregiver), pulverise a floor of broken glass bottles with hand-held ngatu (barkcloth) mallets and sandals fitted with brick soles. Together, the cousins move slowly, recalling ancient movements in a performance in which matriarchal rank is symbolically honoured.

According to Latai Taumoepeau: ‘The more ancient I am, the more contemporary my work is’.