Summary: In this podcast, Latai Taumoepeau speaks with NAVA’s Professional Development Coordinator, Justine Youssef, about her practice relative to climate justice and the environmental, ethical and political effects of climate change in the Pacific region. Further to this Latai, shares ideas on how the art sector can transform the conversation around climate change and translate it into action. Latai Taumoepeau is a contemporary Punake — a body-centred performance artist whose powerful artistic practice tells the stories of her homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga, and her birthplace of the Eora Nation, Sydney. Working in durational performance and documenting it through photographs, she addresses issues of race, class and the female body. In her recent practice, Taumoepeau explores the effects of climate change in the Pacific, probing existing power structures and the looming possibility of dispossession that many island communities face.
