Yuki Kihara: Memory, Media and the Ethnographic Archive By student Jun Kwoun

Part of a series of student articles for the Schaeffer Fine Arts Library Internship Program

Sherman Gallery exhibition catalogues, assorted exhibition notices from other galleries, art criticism, news clippings, photocopies of news clippings and two published books related to the artist. 

Yuki Kihara: Memory, Media and the Ethnographic Archive’ gathers a series of archival materials on the interdisciplinary artist Yuki Kihara, including her early involvement at the Sherman Galleries in Sydney. Tracing the artist’s early practice and emerging notoriety in the art world, this exhibition sheds light on the competing narratives that characterize the artist’s early career. In Fa’afafine: In a Manner of a Woman, the artist restages ethnographic photographs to draw attention to the instability of the colonial archive. Employing an ethnographic aesthetic, Kihara challenges the boundaries of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as binary concepts and proposes both the existence and persistence of gender diverse individuals– including Samoan ‘fa’afafine’– in archival collections. Accompanying these are early press clippings that reveal a shifting artist persona and propose competing narratives. They struggle to articulate the hybridity of Kihara’s personal identity and strike a tension between sensationalized reporting and faithful exploration of her artistic concerns. Today, camp aesthetics, humor and parody are integral strategies that Kihara employs in her ongoing challenge to colonial legacy; Kihara’s early work shows how histories that were once occluded from the archive may spring from it. 

Books Included in the Exhibition: 

• Hruska, Libby, Victoria Gannon, Carol S Ivory, Théano Jaillet, Shigeyuki Kihara, Philippe Peltier, Agnès Penot, et al. Gauguin, a Spiritual Journey. Edited by Libby Hruska and Victoria Gannon. Translated by Rose Vekony. San Francisco: De Young-Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2018. 

• King, Natalie, and Biennale di Venezia. Paradise Camp. Edited by Natalie King. Wellington, New Zealand: Creative New Zealand, Toi Aotearoa, 2022. 

Additional Items Not From the Archives: 

Kihara, Shigeyuki, Jim Vivieaere, and Sherman Galleries. Shigeyuki Kihara : Fa’a Fafine : In a Manner of a Woman : 10 March - 2 April 2005 : Sherman Galleries. Paddington, N.S.W: Sherman Galleries, 2005. 

Text 1: News Clippings 

Early newspaper clippings struggle to grapple with the hybridity of Kihara’s gender and racial identity. Other ephemera show Kihara’s participation in local galleries and the development of campness, satire, and humor as key strategies in artmaking. 

Text 2: Sherman Gallery Materials 

The original catalogues from the Sherman Galleries for ‘Fa’afafine’ (2005) are shown. Kihara’s original opening statement is displayed, which notes her intention in dispelling myths about the nature of fa’afafine, interpretable as a third gender in Sāmoa. 

Text 3: Other Exhibition Catalogues 

Early exhibition materials show Kihara’s early involvement in the local Samoan art scene, her development of a camp aesthetic. Early photographic experiments in self-portraiture and early notoriety in her ‘Adorne to Excess’ (2000) exhibition where she satirized corporate logos on T-shirts to draw attention to Samoan worker exploitation.