Te Tuhi Presents Five New Exhibitions

For the launch of the first exhibition season of 2025, Te Tuhi presents five new exhibitions including John Vea’s video installation commissioned by Te Tuhi for the Busan Biennale 2024, newly commissioned work by Soil of Cultures, Fa’amele Etuale, and Theo Macdonald, and the first screening in Aotearoa of a major moving image work by Korean artist and choreographer Lee Yanghee.

Lee Yanghee presents Hail (2020), a 4-channel video installation that explores people's response and moments of pleasure within the techno culture and underground club scene that expanded in South Korea during the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

John Vea presents 96 degrees in the shade (2024), a durational performance taking the form of a video installation that explores ideas of impermanence and itinerancy through the entanglement of labour and access to shelter. 

Soil of Cultures presents Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for Bananas, an exhibition and series of community-led workshops that seek to raise awareness about the phenomenon of forced migration across the Global South. 

On Te Tuhi’s Project Wall, Fa’amele Etuale presents What’s for Dinner, an installation reflecting the artist’s experience of poverty and the responsibility of caring for one’s family as a sister and a mother.

On Te Tuhi’s Billboards at Parnell Station, Theo Macdonald presents The Oshima Gang, a photographic series reflecting upon Auckland's urban landscape and identity.

Opening event: Saturday 8 February 2025 – everyone is welcome to join in celebrating with artists and curators from 4-6pm for speeches and shared kai. All the exhibitions will run until 13 April 2025.

Hail | Lee Yanghee (KR) 

Hail is a four-channel video installation by Seoul-based artist and choreographer Lee Yanghee. Drawing from Lee’s experiences in both traditional Korean dance and the underground rave scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s, the work explores the intersection of body, pleasure, and form within the codified space of a gallery.

The installation highlights the collective energy and emotions of dance, integrating music composed in collaboration with Mogwaa, Chosun Hong, and DJ SAL. Combining drum and bass, house, and trance, Hail transforms the dancing body into a vital element of musical composition, symbolizing coexistence, unity and shared energy through sound and movement.

Curated by Andrew Kennedy, Hail is presented for the first time in Aotearoa in association with Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival 2025 and in partnership with Satellites.

Lee will be in Tāmaki Makaurau between January and February delivering a performance (IN) on Friday 31 January, and a workshop (Ways of Viewing) prior to the opening of her exhibition on Saturday 8 February.

96 degrees in the shade | John Vea (Aotearoa NZ)  

96 degrees in the shade is a durational performance by John Vea that explores ideas of impermanence and itinerancy through the entanglement of labour and access to shelter. 

In the work, presented as a video installation, the artist disassembles and reassembles a mobile shoe-shine kiosk under the partial shade of a post throughout the course of a working day. On a visit to Busan, the artist noticed some small kiosks run by shoe-shiners, whose mobile units provide scarce shelter from the fearsome sun.

96 degrees in the shade acknowledges the often extreme conditions that labourers work in, raising questions about the politics of shelter, revealing how these tensions resonate within the increased precarity that global migrant workforces face: through the erosion of workers rights and the effects of climate change.

Co-commissioned by Te Tuhi and the Busan Biennale Organizing Committee and first exhibited at the Busan Biennale 2024, 96 degrees in the shade is presented in Aotearoa in association with Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival 2025 and is curated by Andrew Kennedy.

Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for Bananas | Soil of Cultures (Aotearoa NZ/PH)

Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for Bananas is an exhibition and series of community-led workshops by the collective Soil of Cultures that seeks to raise awareness about the phenomenon of forced migration across the Global South.

Through a range of practices including cooking, printmaking, installation and community organising, the collective highlights how migrant and climate struggles coincide with ecological changes, changes that are synonymous with their migration to Aotearoa. 

Using connections to food via introduced cultural crops, memories and collectively held knowledge, they suggest how local adaptations continually reconfigure migrant identities and survival. 

Curated by Amy Weng, Sometimes, the Heart Yearns for Bananas is presented in association with Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival 2025.

The Oshima Gang | Theo Macdonald (Aotearoa NZ) 

Presented on Te Tuhi’s Billboards at Parnell Station, Theo Macdonald's work The Oshima Gang comprises a series of photographs of sites in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland featured in Nagisa Oshima’s film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), including King's College, the Domain Wintergardens, Mount Eden Prison and the historic Auckland Railway Station. 

Through The Oshima Gang, Macdonald reflects upon Auckland's urban landscape and identity while raising some related questions: "Oshima, and his cast and crew, did not set out to describe Auckland, yet they did so nonetheless: the irrelevance of Auckland makes the film a compelling portrait of this city. [...] How did Oshima look at the city I live in, and how did the city look back at him? Can Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence be considered a “landscape theory” film, if only for New Zealand viewers?"

Curated by Andrew Kennedy, the exhibition is presented in association with Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival 2025.

What’s for Dinner | Fa’amele Etuale (Aotearoa NZ/WS/CN) 

What’s for Dinner is a new commission by Fa’amele Etuale for the Te Tuhi Project Wall. Presented as an installation, the exhibition reflects the artist’s experience of poverty and the responsibility of caring for one’s family as eldest child.

Made of easily accessible materials such as cardboard, newspapers, tape, and glue, What’s for Dinner recreates an everyday moment of scarcity, challenging us to reconsider an everyday question asked in homes around the world and revealing how this seemingly simple enquiry can carry different associations. 

Curated by Andrew Kennedy, the exhibition is presented in association with Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival 2025.

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