Working in the Space Between: Pacific Artists in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

Using critiques of essentialism and pluralism as a backdrop, in this essay I survey the works of eleven Pacific Island visual artists, and consider the cultural space they occupy in pursuing their creative practice in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Although a variety of concepts have been deployed by commentators and the artists themselves to describe that space—such as balance, blending, duality, synthesis, fusion, hybridity, liminality, interface, creolization, and vā—I advocate the use of sociologist Fredric Thrasher’s concept of interstitiality to better understand the nature of the cultural and productive space occupied by these artists.