News: Albert L. Refiti named as Professor
We are thrilled to announce that Lealiʻifano Albert Refiti has been promoted to Professor in AUT’s School of Art and Design.
Albert L. Refiti’s Vānimonimo is part of the Sharjah Biennial 16.
In the Biennial programme, Hanahiva Rose writes:
[Refiti’s] work investigates the Sāmoan concept of vā, or relations between people, space and time, as it is structured in Sāmoan cosmology or Vānimonimo. Refiti’s installation Vānimonimo (2024) includes experimental ethnographic drawings he terms ‘cosmograms’. Drawn with pen and pencil on notebook paper, these carefully mapped webs of connection, which recall genealogical systems, reveal how ancestral forms of knowledge and structures of belonging are carried through place and practice. Names, dates and notes give an indication of where and when those ‘fieldnotes’ were made. Often created during formal discussions and ceremonies such as talanoa dialogue, the cosmograms record encounters between people and the environments in which these exchanges occur—including social, cultural and academic settings around Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific.
Albert’s participation is supported by Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa. See more about the Biennial here.
