Biography

Sofia Tekela-Smith (b.1970) is part of a small but increasing number of New Zealand-based Pacific Island artists working in the medium of body adornment. She has enjoyed a burgeoning artist profile over recent years, exhibiting in leading galleries and institutes throughout New Zealand and abroad. Tekela-Smith’s artistic practice is directly informed by her knowledge of Pacific aesthetics which is apparent through her use of form, style, materials and process. Her approach to her art is influenced by the diversity of her cultural experience, which has required Tekela-Smith to reconcile a number of cultural influences.

Tekela-Smith considers her art work to be an extension of self. She traces her artistic gestation back to her childhood on Rotuma, where she acquired many of her art-making skills through her observations of older female relatives. Since this time she has continued to develop her art-making techniques, mainly through experimentation. She consistently employs natural materials that enable her to achieve visual continuity with art forms from the Pacific. These include mother of pearl shell, diridamu seeds, cultured pearls, coconut shell, cowrie shell and pounamu.

Adornment has been a focal point for Tekela-Smith since the early 1990s. Initially showing in craft-driven spaces, Tekela-Smith’s work has moved comfortably into fine art contexts. Since 2003, she has looked to other mediums such as sculpture and photography as a way of presenting her adornments. The narrative content in her work is made even more apparent through these mediums and has allowed her to further critique, consider and express wider social, cultural and personal concerns through her art. This is evident in her large-scale photographs; Savage Island Man with Pounamu/Pure, 2003 and her 2004 works such as Your hand is a portrait of a landscape coming into my heart and Your face contains matters of pure aesthetics which were exhibited as part of Tekela-Smith’s show at John Leech Gallery, Brown Eyes Blue, 2004.

Sofia Tekela-Smith's work has been included in numerous exhibitions including; Paradise Now? at the Asia Contemporary Society Museum, New York, 2004 and the International Festival of the Arts in Belau, 2004. Her works are also held at Auckland Art Gallery, Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, and Grassi Museum, Leipzig, Germany.