Media release 'Postcards from Paradise'

Tania Wursig returns to Tahiti for her 7th annual visit with her new body of work ‘Postcards from Paradise’ set to open at Galerie Winkler on the 13th September.

Wursig is well known in Tahiti and internationally for her vibrant paintings that celebrate the Tahitian spirit and culture. Her works increasingly illustrate the deep connection the Polynesian people have with their ‘Fenua’.

With this continuing theme, Wursig hopes to touch the viewer and reignite the sense that humans and nature are one. With ever increasing threats of climate change, this artist’s work serves as a reminder to the world that we must protect the beauty of Tahiti and other Pacific cultures and their islands.

In her new body of work ‘Postcards from Paradise’ Wursig has introduced a new element, an underlying examination of the theme of suppression and exploitation of a people and their culture.

“I have always been fascinated by the aesthetic of Tahitian post colonial imagery. Most of these are staged depictions of the seductive, Tahitian Vahine in paradise. Whilst many of these images are simply that, others seem to reveal a blatant exploitation of the islanders’ natural sense of comfort and freedom with their physicality. This seems a rather hypocritical contrast to the ‘Mother Hubbard’ imposed dress style of the missionary days. In some images the ‘subject’ (usually a woman) is seen to cringe under the shadow of this voyeuristic, colonial male, gaze.”

I see these post colonial images as a metaphor for all that colonial rule and the ‘modern’ world have taken from indigenous peoples world wide. Not only destroying precious culture and tradition but also the lands and seas they inhabit.