Exhibitions » Exhibition Archive » SQUARE2 Archive » Dan Taulapapa-McMullin
Dan Taulapapa-McMullin
16 February - 6 March 2011 in the Square² Gallery
Samoan American artist Dan Taulapapa-McMullin is a playwright, poet, painter and video artist based in Laguna, California, USA. His video Sinalela won the 2002 Best Short Film Award at the Honolulu Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Filmed entirely on a hand held camera in American Samoa, this three minute film tells the tale of a fa’afafine ex-rugby player who spends his time doing household chores and fantasizing about finding his Prince Charming and escaping to far away places.
Sinalela is essentially a cross cultural fairy tale, one which draws on the Western fable of Cinderella and the Samoan fa'agogo (proverbial tale) of Sina and the Tuna (eel). This combination of fairytale and fa'agogo is a common feature of Taulapapa-McMullin’s artistic oeuvre. In this way he is able to comment on the convergence of customary culture and contemporary experience of fa’a Samoa (the Samoan way) and the dynamics of fa’afafine identity in the twenty first century.
In Samoan oral traditions, Sina was a woman of legendary beauty. One day a tuna fell in love with her. Blinded by her beauty it chased her from village to village until the elders ordered it killed. As it was dying, it asked Sina to plant its head in the ground. From the head grew a coconut tree, and today when you remove the husk from a coconut you can still see its face represented by three small circular marks on top of the coconut.
In referencing this tale Taulapapa-McMullin casts a fa’afafine named Sina in the role of Cinderella or Sinalela. Unsatisfied with the monotony of his domestic circumstance, Sina or Sinalela longs for the freedom which his sisters enjoy. One day while washing the dishes an enchanted one eyed fish appears from beneath the kitchen sink–an omen foretelling of the coming of Sinalela’s Prince Charming.
Similar themes of sexuality, desire and gender identity can also be seen in Taulapapa-McMullin’s poem Jerry, Sheree and the Eel currently on display upstairs in the Deane Gallery as part of the Mana Takatāpui: Taera Tāne group exhibition.
Dan Taulapapa-McMullin (Samoan) lives in Laguna, California, USA. He has had many residencies and exhibited extensively internationally. Most recently he exhibited in Samoan Art: Urban (2010) at the De Young Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco where was he was artist in residence, and currently has a solo exhibition at the Gorman Museum, University of California.
Dan Taulapapa-McMullin
16 February–6 March 2011
Sinalela 2001
DVD
Duration: 3 minutes, 25 seconds.
Courtesy of the artist