Join Te Papa Senior Curator Sean Mallon as he discusses his long term research on Sāmoan Tattooing and the stories behind the recent publication TATAU: Sāmoan tattoo, New Zealand Art, Global Culture (2010 and 2023).
This book is the first to cover the 3,000-year history of Sāmoan tattooing, and remarkably, the tools for making Sāmoan tatau remained largely unchanged from the 1800s through to the late 20th century. Previous studies have been mainly ethnographic snapshots, or studies made at particular points in time, including a cluster of studies from the late 1800s to the mid-twentieth century, while TATAU analyses and synthesises many accounts of tattooing in their historical context, so we can understand how they were part of larger processes of continuity and change.
Sean will explore Tatau as a medium and a set of cultural practices, relating to power, gender, identity, colonialism, appropriation, and globalisation, and how people utilise Sāmoan
tattooing in their lives socially and culturally.
Sean Mallon is Senior Curator Pacific Cultures at Te Papa. His exhibitions include Tatau: Sāmoan Tattooing and Photography (2019), Paperskin: the art of tapa cloth (2009), Tangata o le Moana: the story of New Zealand and the people of the Pacific (2007), Voyagers: discovering the Pacific and (2002). He is the author or lead editor of several books and most recently was co-author of TATAU: Sāmoan tattoo, New Zealand Art, Global Culture (2010 and 2023).
Photo credits: Right: Sean Mallon, Above: Te Papa Press.