DAN   TAULAPAPA  MCMULLIN

ARTIST‘S STATEMENT:

I'm interested in the movement of water and how that has been interpreted in Oceania art, as in Maori and Papua interlace. I come from a surfing family in California and Hawai'i. In these paintings with the movement of water I am thinking especially of spirits and resurrection, these are themes of my work and of Samoan spirituality. The Sina and Tigilau narrative is specifically concerned with this theme, as Sina seeks out the spirit of her lover Tigilau at the watery gates of the afterlife. In Samoan traditional narrative, the medium to these spirits is the Ilamutu, whom I believe is fa'afafine, a person who is changeable, like water. In my Logologo paintings I seek to find a hieroglyphic language that expresses my nature as Samoan. This relationship between the text and the body informs my painting at the present moment, where for me the text and the body are written in water.

BIO:

Samoan American writer, painter and filmmaker, Dan Taulapapa McMullin, has engaged audiences in the South Pacific, North America and Europe, with stories that take place in Samoa, American Samoa, and among the Samoan diaspora in the United States. His 2004 illustrated poetry chapbook A Drag Queen Named Pipi published by Tinfish Press of Honolulu, continued a line of work that began with the 1996 performance poem The Bat and other early works earning McMullin a 1997 Poets&Writers Award from The Loft. His film Sinalela received the 2002 Honolulu Gay & Lesbian Film Festival Best Short Film Award. His political essays on colonization in American Samoa contributed to the 1999 Gustavus Meyers Humanitarian Book Award-winning Resistance in Paradise and his first children's book in the Samoan language Laloifi was published in 2005 in Wellngton. Currently he is completing a book of short stories The Only Paradise is Paradise Lost, for Hawai'i-Aotearoa co-publication. And he is developing a film project Shark in the Woods with producer Merata Mita and Pacific Islanders in Communications/CPB. He was once nominated for an LA Area Emmy Award by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and is a current nominee to the Rockefeller Media Fellowship for 2006. His first solo exhibit of paintings takes place at Chase Gallery Bates College in October 2005, he also exhibited a sound installation at Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco, and a video installation at New York University's /A/P/A Gallery, and his work showed recently at Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. More on his recent work is at www.taulapapa.com.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Website: www.taulapapa.com

Email: Taulapapa@hotmail.com

BACK