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Yuki Kihara

다윈 드래그 Darwin Drag | 2025 | 6’15”
Courtesy of Yuki Kihara and Milford Galleries, Aotearoa New Zealand

Synopsis
Darwin Drag (2025), informed by recent research by Ross Brooks, examines how Charles Darwin (1809–1882) shaped aspects of his evolutionary theory in ways that reflected the moral sensibilities of the Victorian era. Darwin suggested that same-sex attraction and non-heteronormative behaviors in animals were rare or anomalous, a position now understood as influenced by the social conventions of his time. The film revisits this historical tension between scientific inquiry and cultural constraint. In Darwin Drag, Yuki Kihara undergoes a prosthetic transformation into Darwin, staging an imagined encounter with BUCKWEAT, a renowned Sāmoan drag performer. Within this speculative exchange, Darwin reflects on the suppression of queer behaviors in the natural world, exposing the uneasy relationship between knowledge, secrecy and social conformity. The film also introduces marine species found in the waters surrounding the Sāmoan archipelago, including clownfish and parrotfish, whose fluid sexual characteristics echo the concept of fa‘afafine, a recognized third gender in Sāmoan culture. Presented within Scene II:Territorial Flow, the work situates these shifting identities within oceanic ecologies, where currents, species and cultures move across porous boundaries.


About the artist
Yuki Kihara is a Japanese-Sāmoan artist based in Sāmoa whose interdisciplinary practice interrogates the enduring legacies of colonial history and their socio-political resonance in contemporary culture. Working across performance, photography, film, sculpture, textiles and curatorial projects, Kihara draws upon Sāmoan aesthetics and knowledge systems to reframe dominant historical narratives through Indigenous perspectives. Her work is grounded in close collaboration with Sāmoan and wider Moana Pacific communities. While developed locally, her projects are conceived to circulate internationally, entering global artistic and scholarly discourse while maintaining a strong sense of cultural accountability to the communities from which they emerge. Kihara first gained international prominence with Living Photographs (2008), presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manahatta New York, after which the museum acquired her work for its permanent collection. In 2022, she represented Aotearoa New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale with the critically acclaimed exhibition Paradise Camp. Kihara is also an affiliate of Ecological Art Practices at NICHE, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.