I remember the day clearly; a strong arctic wind had hit Venice on preview night of Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania at Ocean Space, Chiesa di San Lorenzo. The blistering cold had forced tourists to shuffle quickly through narrow walkways, the ocean’s waves crashing in chorus against the algae-stained walls from previous flooding. It was a sight to behold—the heady theatre of this ancient island along with the liveness of the ocean in constant discourse with the history and vitality of this foreign culture.

When interviewing Latai Taumoepeau, we spent a lot of time talking about Venice and how important this project was to its artists and the curator. “All of our values aligned,” she says. “We had the opportunity to imagine what is necessary and embrace the unknown on so many levels.”

Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania is curated by Bougainville an artist Taloi Havini and includes a sculptural installation by Wāhine architect Elisapeta Hinemoa Heta. Led by an ancestral call and response and attuned to the generational teachings of Indigenous elders on climate and the ocean’s seafloor, Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania subverts the colonial extraction and exploitation of Islander resources.

Taumoepeau’s contribution Deep Communion sung in minor (ArchipelaGO, THIS IS NOT A DRILL) (2024) is a multifaceted work bridging Tonga, Venice and the deep oceans between. First staged in the ethereal cathedral where Vivaldi once com-posed, Taumoepeau’s remarkable work addresses environmentalism, activism, ancestral storytelling and collaboration. Now, in front of the waters of Gadigal Country in Sydney’s Artspace, the piece has been extended to embrace the site’s waterside view and provide a deeper connection with the ocean floor addressed by the artist’s work. Taumoepeau’s longstanding practice brings many artforms together and centres a Tongan worldview through body-led performance, social and community activation and spectacle. By foregrounding the growing impacts of climate change on the Pacific Islands and her ancestral bond to the oceanic history she is a part of, Taumoepeau persuasively, yet gently, highlights disproportionate impacts on Islander communities. Exploring the rising disparities of labour when facing ecological challenges, Taumoepeau highlights the vulnerability of our neighbouring communities who are exhibiting the most striking and dangerous signs of climate change brought on largely by the West. Housed in an interactive arena, Deep Communion sung in minor (ArchipelaGO, THIS IS NOTA DRILL) is an ode, testimonial and durational prayer. It uses sound, rowing machines and a stadium-like installation to summon Islander culture and protocol. Here, Taumoepeau engages performers, students, sports teams and the general public to bear witness and participate in an ancient call initiated by the communal action of rowing. An audio recording of a ceremonial song fills the space, triggered by the motion created by the machines.

While sitting on a pew-like grandstand, I watched a group of young people from Venice’s local basket-ball team follow the artist out onto ‘the field’. Wearing their team’s uniform players arranged themselves onto the machines and followed Taumoepeau’s whistle and timer. Audience members sat transfixed on the ethereal and imaginative space that was created. I watched as players coordinated them-selves to the sounds of the choir, tentatively taking turns to keep the machines in constant movement while Taumoepeau sings and performs me’e-tu’u-paki, a cultural dance that references the act of paddling. Echoing the movements of the Italian gondola rowers outside the walls of the Chiesa di San Lorenzo, the synchronicity of ideas at play—labour, athleticism, and faith as Taumoepeau states, “moves the spectacle into a shared/relational space; an embodiment”. Taumoepeau presents this work as an action to defend the ocean, and an offering of service. The invitation to stand and paddle is simple but charged with a sense of existential participatory action. It is a moment to reflect on an opportunity, or perhaps, a responsibility to learn from alternative forms of knowledge systems including those in the Pacific and Global South.

Community engagement and collaborative work regularly appears in Taumoepeau’s practice. She cites the video installation War Dance of the Final Frontier (2018) at the art space Vitalstatistix in Port Adelaide (another waterside venue) and Refuge (2017) an interdisciplinary project at Arts House Melbourne, as prominent works that formed her interest in deep-sea mining practices and the intersections of athleticism, engineering and performance art. For Refuge, Taumoepeau constructed a bicycle that manually powered a freezing plate to create a single ice cube. War Dance of the Final Frontier explored a mythical oceanic battle between a collective body and a climate centurion monster. Simultaneously, across return visits to Tonga, Taumoepeau watched the quick uprise of the now bankrupt Canadian mining company Nautilus Minerals take hold of her local environment and begin their expansive experiment across the ocean floor.

Taumoepeau amplifies the experience of song, ritual and spectatorship and, in doing so, highlights the extensive exploitation and extractive practices used across Pacific nations. Her work dissects the anthropological gaze and deconstructs the hierarchy that shapes Oceania’s relationship to the West. By composing a new function within an ancient practice, Taumoepeau builds important and lasting universal connections.

Re-Stor(y)ing Oceania
Artspace (Sydney/Eora)
On now—6 April

This article was originally published in the March/April 2025 print edition of Art Guide Australia.