In 2006, Wellington-based artist Sheyne Tuffery became a Samoan chief, a matai. Ghost in the Machine explores the contemporary meaning of this traditional title. Tuffery says: ‘To have a title bestowed on me seemed very foreign, especially because I don’t live in Samoa, don’t speak Samoan and don’t live the fa’asamoa way.’ Using animation and stereoscopic technology, Tuffery reimagines portraits of unidentified nineteenth-century matai from the Te Papa collection. Ghost in the Machine speculates on what they would have thought about the world today and how they would have dealt with community obligations in the age of globalisation.
