Beyond Gauguin: Tracing the Colonial Stereotype of the Exotic Pacific Island Woman

This webinar delves beyond Gauguin himself, shedding light on the colonial context during his time in Tahiti and the enduring legacy of Western colonization in the South Pacific.
In 2020, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen presented the exhibition “Paul Gauguin - Why Are You Angry?” This exhibit not only mapped the myth surrounding the artist but also unveiled the transhistorical colonial myth of Tahiti, both within and beyond Gauguin’s creations.
Join us in this webinar featuring New Zealand-Australian artist Angela Tiatia and Australian-American historian and Pacific expert Patricia O’Brien. The conversation will be moderated by Anna Kærsgaard Gregersen, curator of French Art from the 19th and 20th century at the Glyptotek.
Using the exhibition “Paul Gauguin - Why Are You Angry?” as a starting point, this conversation brings together the research and shared interests of Tiatia and O’Brien, which include gender, sexuality, race, and femininity. Specifically, the webinar will delve into the colonial stereotype of the exoticized Pacific island woman that extends far beyond Gauguin’s works.
About the panelists:
Patricia O’Brien is a wide-ranging historian and analyst of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. She is the author of Tautai: Sāmoa, World History and the Life and Ta’isi O. F. Nelson (2017), The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Colonial Pacific (2006). She has held the Jay I. Kislak Fellow in American Studies at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress (2011), the J. D. Stout Fellow in New Zealand Studies at Victoria University Wellington (2012) and was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the Australia National University (2012-2019) where she remains attached to the Department of Pacific Affairs. In 2020, she returned to Georgetown University, where she worked from 2000-2013, to the university’s Asian Studies and History departments.
Angela Tiatia explores contemporary culture through performance, moving image, painting, sculpture and photography, drawing out the relationships between representation, gender, neo-colonialism and the commodification of body and place. Often through the lenses of history, popular and material culture, the artist moves deftly in her compositions of still and moving image from pointed detail to satellite view addressing themes within power structures and how these impact the individual and their communities.
Anna Kærsgaard Gregersen holds an MA in Art History from the University of Copenhagen and is a curator of French Art of the 19th and 20th century at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. Her curatorial practice focuses on transhistorical and transnational dialogues across contemporary, modern, and ancient art, exploring and challenging the conventions of contemporary exhibition practices. Recent exhibitions include: Abbas Akhavan - curtain call (2023), Suzanne Valadon - model, painter, rebel (2022); Michael Armitage - Account of An Illiterate Man (2021) and Paul Gauguin - Why Are You Angry? (2020).