Artist paving the way for others to follow

TRAILBLAZER: Lindah Lepou, who now makes her home in Gisborne, has exhibited her work alongside some of the greats of the fashion world. Picture supplied

An internationally celebrated artist living in Gisborne has added a new arts award to her bio.

The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi last week announced its first ever major arts award for queer artists in Aotearoa, and Lindah Lepou as the inaugural Toi Kō Iriiri Queer Laureate recipient.

Lindah has long made her mark as a Pacific artist across many genres, as a soul singer, award-winning designer and multimedia artist. She has lived in Gisborne since 2020 and has a strong connection to the region.

The Toi Kō Iriiri award recognises and celebrates an outstanding queer artist, supporting them with a $30,000 grant and sharing their story with the nation.

Lindah's work sits at the intersection of fashion, art and her “fa'afafine” identity, creating a visual language that has paved the way for others to follow. Her art has taken her from the runways of Australia and the Pacific to the stages of Europe, but at her heart will always be her Samoan “gafa” (whakapapa or heritage).

“Fa'afafine is a Samoan term for ‘like a woman',” Lindah said.

“In Western terminology that would be compared to transgender, transvestite, transsexual, transformer, whatever, but my interpretation is masculine and feminine. I was born male, my femininity is cranked up so as a designer that's a natural filter that's there. It's a filter that all my inspiration and ideas come through.”

This year is the 22nd year of the Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate Awards, established to celebrate and empower New Zealand's most outstanding practising artists across a diverse range of disciplines. Recipients are identified as Aotearoa's most outstanding artists for 2022, recognised for their outstanding practice and their significant impact.

Lindah was born in Aotearoa and raised in Samoa. She returned to New Zealand as a teenager on a one-way flight she won after coming first in a fa'afafine beauty pageant. Three decades later, she is internationally celebrated as an award-winning multi-dimensional artist.

She draws inspiration from the tensions in her Pasifika and Palagi (non-Samoan) lineage, and uses a multi-dimensional approach to balance attitudes to culture and gender, creativity, economic opportunity and spirituality.

Lindah coined the term “Pacific Couture” to define her dramatic one-off garments, often made using Pasifika elements and innovative use of traditional materials.

She has exhibited alongside the greats (including Vivienne Westwood and Christian Dior) and is interested in the life, death and rebirth of the works she creates. She notably set fire to 25 years of work as a symbol of transformation and as a way to let them go.

Lindah lays down a challenge for us to reconsider ideas about fashion, art and identity, and offers a new vocabulary to expand the way we think and move in the world.

“I am not only proud to have extensive interdisciplinary experience gained through the real-world route working with some of Aotearoa's creative pioneers, but I have also been a consistent support system for so many emerging and established LGBTQIA+ and non-LGBTQIA+ artists over the years,” she said.

The Toi Kō Iriiri Queer Laureate Award was created to celebrate an outstanding artist — or collective of artists — whose practice has a meaningful impact on queer arts communities. The artist or artists will come from a queer community, and their work will represent their community and contribute to social change.

Lindah Lepou's exhibition Pacific Couture: Rebirth is opening at Tairawhiti Museum, tomorrow 10am, and running until November 6.