Angela Tiatia addresses the themes of colonialism and post-colonialism in her work. Her early performance videos engage directly with experiences of physical endurance, voyeurism, being an outsider, and the effort required to assert a contemporary Pacific identity in Australia. These works also continue the artist’s exploration of societal structures and exchanges of power, particularly in relation to the female Pacific body.

Walking the wall (from ‘An Inventory of Gestures’ series) 2014 is a performance video in which Tiatia, clad in a black body suit and a pair of spiky, black high heels, embarks on a project of walking the wall until it is no longer physically possible to do so. The artist’s legs are covered in a beautiful malu (tattoo) identifying her genealogical ties. The exposure of Tiati’s malu in this work both asserts her Samoan identity and recalls a Western fascination with the marked, semi-clad Islander body. Similar stereotypes are addressed in the video Heels, from the same series, in which Tiatia again uses her own body to explore the ways we perpetuate regimes of power.

In Edging and seaming 2013, the artist juxtaposes the repeated actions of workers in a sewing factory in Guangzhou, China, with those of her mother, Lusi Tiatia, undertaking similar labour in Auckland. Lusi’s grandmother, a Chinese immigrant to Samoa, belonged to generations of Pacific peoples who were encouraged to migrate to Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s to bolster a growing economy. Poignantly, Tiatia highlights the labour migration of different generations of workers around the world, and their search for economic opportunities to support their extended families back home.