Niki Hastings-McFall is a New Zealand jeweller and artist of Samoan and Pākehā descent. She has been described by art historian Karen Stevenson as one of the core members of a group of artists of Pasifika descent who brought contemporary Pacific art to 'national prominence and international acceptance'.
Background and education
In 2000 Hastings-McFall graduated from the Manukau Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Visual Arts majoring in Jewellery. Much of her work references her Samoan heritage, which she began learning about when she first met her father in 1992.
Work
Hastings-McFall's work has been informed by her experience of growing up within Pakeha culture and later learning about her Samoan heritage. Among the issues that inform her work are 'the effects of Christianity and colonialism in the Pacific, loss of culture, the transplantation of Pacific Islanders to large cities and the shaping of traditional culture to fit contemporary urban culture'. Although she began making jewellery, Hastings-McFall found within a few years that she needed to extend beyond this:
'I found it brought up other things I wanted to explore. I was really interested in jewellery, researching and exploring, but that led to other things I couldn't do with jewellery. I wanted to make objects without the whole conversation about body adornment. Today there are definitely elements of jewellery and jewellery-making in my work. I don't deny it or repress it. I've always been inclined to making objects about ideas.'
Hastings-McFall's work often references cultural stereotyping of the Pacific through the use of everyday material objects. She makes frequent use of the flower lei, either buying cheap nylon lei and using the 'petals' to cover furniture and lightboxes, or making lei from non-traditional materials, such as the nylon thread used in weedeaters, or the fish-shaped soy sauce bottles that come with take-away sushi packs, which 'carry on the tradition of Pacific adoption of modern materials like plastic in customary forms as well as commenting on the economic traditions of Pacific Island peoples in urban Aotearoa New Zealand'. Karen Stevenson writes of Hastings-McFall's lei works:
Hastings-McFall finds much to parody in the contemporary lives of Pacific Islanders as they encounter the stereotypes of the Western gaze. Hastings-McFall's humour is the basis and inspiration for her Urban Lei Series. Using McDonald's throwaways, curtain nets, weedeater nylon and soy sauce containers, Hastings-McFall addresses the lived island and urban realities of New Zealand.
Along with artist Sofia Tekela-Smith, Hastings-McFall has also revisited the kapkap, traditionally made from mother of pearl and tortoiseshell, but in Hastings-McFall's versions made from materials such a gold and computer disks, or mother of pearl and stainless steel.
Exhibitions
Hastings-McFall has exhibited extensively since 1994 and has received support from Creative New Zealand to produce work. Major New Zealand exhibitions include In Flyte, a survey exhibition at Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua, Home AKL at Auckland City Art Gallery, Oceania: Imagining the Pacific at City Gallery Wellington, and Bottled Ocean curated by Jim Viviaeare, which toured New Zealand in 1994-1995. Her work has also featured in international exhibitions including Niu Pasifik: Urban Art from the Pacific Rim, Gorman Museum, UC Davis, ; Pasifika Styles, University of Cambridge ; and Paradise Now?, Asia Society Museum, New York.
1 Noble Savage, 2 Dusky Maidens
In 1999 Hastings-McFall collaborated with jewellers Chris Charteris and Tekala-Smith on the exhibition 1 Noble Savage, 2 Dusky Maidens at Judith Anderson Gallery in Auckland, which helped draw attention to a new generation of New Zealand artists of Pacific descent and showed "what contemporary jewellers might offer to contemporary Pacific identity − notably a sense of playful appropriation of Pacific adornment that is ironic and serious at the same time". The exhibition was accompanied by a publication titled 1 Noble Savage, 2 Dusky Maidens with reproductions of the three artists' work and essays by Mark Kirby, Lisa Taouma and Nicholas Thomas.The publication's catalogue featured a photograph of the three artists in a faux-ethnographic style, dressed in traditional manner and mimicking the conventions of photographs taken in Samoa in the 1890s for Western consumption, as a comment on stereotypical presentations of Pacific peoples.
Vahine Collective
Hastings-McFall has also worked collaboratively with artists Lily Laita and Lonnie Hutchinson as the 'Vahine Collective'. In 2002 the collective researched ancient rock platforms called tia seu lupe in Samoa, resulting in an exhibition titled Vahine. In 2012 the collective shared the Creative New Zealand and National University of Samoa Samoa Artist in Residence award, with each artist spending a month in Samoa to extend the research and work began a decade earlier.
