Edith Amituanai

Amituanai was born in Auckland in 1980 to parents who had emigrated from Samoa.[1][2] She was raised in Christchurch and now is located in Ranui, West Auckland.[3][4][5]

In 2005, Amituanai completed a Bachelor of Design at Unitec Institute of Technology.[6] Amituanai's photography first came to the attention of the art world while she attended Unitec, when her work was included in the Break/Shift exhibition (2004) at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.[7] Her work was later included in the Lara Strongman book Contemporary New Zealand Photographers (2006), documenting her work as an emerging artist.[7] In 2009 she completed her Masters of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland.[6] In 2008 she was the first Pasifika artist to be nominated for the Walters Prize for Déjeuner, an exhibition depicting her cousin after a rugby practice session in France.[6][8]

In 2015, Amituanai founded ETA (Edith's Talent Agency), an art project documenting the communities near her local suburb of Ranui.[5] She is also the arts co-ordinator at Ranui Action Project, a local community development programme.[5]

2019 was the first survey exhibition of her work at the Adam Art Gallery in Wellington curated by Ane Tonga and included over 60 of her photographs.[1] Amituanai received the KLM Paul Huf Award, Amsterdam,[4] and in 2019 Amituanai was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours, for services to photography and community.[9][6]

Her artwork is held in the collections of Te Papa (the national museum of New Zealand), Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.[1]

Amituanai's photography focuses on diaspora experiences in New Zealand,[2] family communities,[6] urban environments and amplifying unseen and unheard people.[5] Many of her works depict Pasifika in Aotearoa, and transnational domestic interiors of Samoan diaspora houses.[5] Amituanai is inspired by documentary photography, and has a commitment to community engagement with her subjects.[10] Amituanai's documentation of diaspora communities in West Auckland have been described as challenging the dominant myth that West Auckland is primarily a European area.[11] Her work features aspects of both straight documentary photography and staged photography.[7]

Her works variously confront her parents' cultural values in a new context,[2] celebrate her parents' generation's Samoan traditions such as marriage in a New Zealand context,[7] and document the ways in which Pasifika communities establish new lives while maintaining connections to their homeland.[12]

Amituanai got married in 2005. At the time, she was the first "Mrs Amituanai" in her husband's household for 14 years, after the untimely death of his mother.[7]

• 2014 – Taipei Artist Village resident.[6]
• 2017 – Flaxmere's Kimi Ora Community School.[6]

Double Take (2019) - ISBN 978-1-877309-43-4.

Keep on Kimi Ora (2018) – ISBN 9780473437619, 0473437619 – collaboration with Kimi Ora Primary School in Flaxmere.[13][14]

• 2006 – Mrs Amituanai. RAMP Gallery, Waikato Institute of Technology, City Campus (Hamilton.)[15]
• 2013 – Through the Key Hole. Collaboration with Claire Harris and Erwin Olaf. Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, Wellington.[16]
• 2013–2014 – La fine del mondo, Auckland Art Gallery. Auckland. (Part of Freedom Farmers: New Zealand.)[17]
• 2019 – Double Take. Survey exhibition. Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, Curated by Ane Tonga.[1]
• 2020–2021– In Our Sea of Island's. Collaboration with George Crummer. The Homestead Galleries, Auckland.[18]
• 2021 – The Moon Was Talking, Collaboration with Kelston Girls College, Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery. Auckland.[19]
• 2021 – ‘La’u Pele Moana (My darling Moana)’ series. QAGOMA's landmark exhibition series.The Gallery of Modern Art (Queensland Art Gallery).[20]

• 2007 – Marti Friedlander Photographic Award[23]
• 2008 – Walters Prize nominee (first nominee of Pacific descent.)[6]