Please note this event has been postponed until further notice, with Tāmaki Makaurau being at alert level four.

This lunchtime talk series explores how making practices are shared, interpreted, revived and recorded.

For this conversation, Pacific poet and multi-disciplinary artist Daren Kamali will share insights into the Ulumate Project. This project focuses on ulucavu (Fijian human hair wigs), an ancient iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) practice that has been dormant for over 200 years.  

Kamali has been examining the making of ulucavu to revitalise this significant practice through research, documentation and making.

He has been cutting and preserving his own hair since 1997 to become a contemporary ulucavu, made by his aunty, renowned artist Joana Monolagi.

Kamali and Monolgai will share thoughts on this significant cultural practice and the journey to revival.

Booking is required here and light refreshments will be provided.

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Daren Kamali is a Pacific poet and multi-disciplinary artist. He is the author of the trilogy of poetry collections Saltwater Realm: Tales, Poems and Songs from the Underwater World (2011), Squid Out of Water: The Evolution (2014), and What Becomes of the Flying Squid? (2016).  He is currently Heritage Pacific Advisor for Auckland Libraries. 

Joana Monolagi has been creating Fijian art for 20 years. She was born in the town of Ba, Viti Levu, Fiji, and moved to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1978. Monolagi works with art forms from her Fijian heritage including masi (Fijian bark cloth) printing, creating Fijian costumes and teaching meke (dance).

This series is supported by Disentangling the European Gaze Research Hub, Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland.