“Creation” can refer to birth, but also suggests industrial fabrication. In these sculptures, electrical wiring harnesses take the form of family trees, such that genealogy is mapped through charged material: cable harnesses are one of the main industrial products manufactured in Sāmoa today. The sculptures will also be functioning power sources, used to mine cryptocurrency throughout the exhibition. Thus, the generational diagrams that centre in “Creation Stories” not only track but produce value, pointing towards the exploitative relation-mapping paradigms that power tech companies’ business models in Web 2.0, where platforms like Facebook piece together users’ social graphs as fodder for extraction. Proximity, information flows, currency, and exploitation resurface here, their mystifying production of value made visible. The resulting sculptures emphasize how networks of intimate connection can be, and have historically been, exploited for financial gain.
The exhibition of “Creation Stories” at The University of Auckland’s Gus Fisher Gallery in 2022 also includes a curatorial arm, highlighting a selection of work by other artists from around the world who touch on the relationships between familial, political, and technological histories.
