Luke Willis Thompson – Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, 2024–2026

Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa is the Māori name for the Pacific Ocean. It also expresses a political vision of Oceania as an interconnected region shaped by colonisation and continuing struggles for sovereignty. Thompson gives this vision form through three state broadcasts from a near future under Indigenous governments, each centred on a different site of struggle. Whakamoemoeā envisions Aotearoa New Zealand becoming a Māori plurinational state through constitutional transformation. Soro revisits the country’s 2021 apology for the Dawn Raids, a period of anti-immigration fervour and state-sanctioned police violence against Pacific migrants in the 1970s. It imagines a further apology with broader reparations, including unrestricted Pacific mobility, delivered by a prime minister who is himself the son of a victim. The final film turns to present-day New Caledonia, where members of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front address viewers directly, demanding independence from France.

Through film, performance and installation, Fijian-New Zealand artist Luke Willis Thompson explores the politics of representation and the legacies of colonialism.