Exhibits,
Leitu Bonnici Pule
Opening: Wednesday 18th February, 6-8pm Dates: Feb 18 - Mar 14 2026
‘Pule’ (pronounced like ‘bull-eh’) is a word in gagana Sāmoa that can be understood in English as ‘cowrie shell’, ‘power’, or ‘authority’. This work critiques the documentation of culture through Western science (anthropology) and technology (the camera). A cowrie shell bead, repeatedly 3D scanned and reprinted, demonstrates the degradation inherent in Western archival methods, even with supposedly cutting-edge, ‘objective’ technology. Referencing Samoan cultural signifiers while parodying scientific display, this exhibition explores the misrepresentation inevitable in outsider interference, the internalisation of colonial perception and the reclamation of culture.
Shells are immediate signifiers of the ocean, in this case the Great Ocean (otherwise known as Oceania, colonially termed the Pacific Ocean), which spans over a third of the world’s surface and is home to extraordinarily diverse Indigenous cultures with continuous histories spanning thousands of years. A mass-produced plastic version of a shell gestures toward its living counterpart, but carries connotations of geographic displacement, cultural appropriation and ecocide. Only under the guardianship of tagata with ancestral and cultural ties can these faux pule regain authentic connection to their origin.
Leitu Bonnici (ia/she/they) is a graphic designer, filmmaker and artist currently based between Naarm and the Netherlands. As a tagata Sāmoa, they are proud to belong to the Great Ocean, which spans over a third of the world’s surface and is home to diverse continuing Indigenous histories that span thousands of years. Their practice critically examines ‘the archive’ and ‘the publication’, utilising various interdisciplinary and anti-disciplinary methodologies that challenge pālagi myths (inaccurate narratives plotted along contrived linear timeframes that are granted unearned authority by Eurocentric forms of information collation and dissemination).