Te Tuhi presents a project by emerging Manukau-based artist Vea Mafile’o.
Vea Mafile’o’s exhibition Who will douse the kingdom? documents riots which took place in her ancestral homeland Tonga’s capital city Nuku’alofa on the 16th November, 2006. She screens confiscated footage of a number of occurrences in the event, from the protesters gathering peacefully outside the parliamentary building to the ensuing violence that followed, causing multiple deaths, looting and fires which reportedly damaged as much as sixty percent of the local business district.
Her recent return to Tonga nearly a year following the incident conveys fully the scale of this event where only concrete foundations reside where these buildings once stood.