Water Stories: Elemental Connections

Mon 23 Mar 2020

Water is one of our most precious resources, it’s the vital element that sustains all life on Earth. Angela Tiatia is concerned about her environment, her video Holding On explores climate change, sustainability, and ultimately the vulnerability of the communities who live precariously near the ocean.

Holding On is a performance video Tiatia created in 2015 on Funafuti, the main atoll of Tuvalu, in the South Pacific. The work shows the artist lying prostrate on a cement slab as the ocean laps at and washes over her. Currently, atolls such as those comprising Tuvalu are only two metres above sea level and escalating tidal flows are gradually submerging them.

Tiatia patiently submits to the ocean she was raised to honour, growing up on the island of Savai’i in Samoa. As surges threaten to sweep her away, Tiatia re-secures her hold and her body forms a T-shape reminiscent of crucifixion, perhaps hinting at ideas of punishment or redemption.

Angela Tiatia ‘Holding On’ (still) 2015

In the three-channel video Tuvalu 2016, Tiatia explores [the] connection to and the vulnerability of the communities who live precariously near the ocean. As poetic scenes of daily life play out across the screens, water crashes, sloshes, bubbles and seeps over and through the ground, consuming roads, gardens, backyards, playing fields, and people’s livelihoods. At the end of the work, a ball rises into the air in a wide arc before falling back to Earth. High above, the sun travels another arc behind clouds, grey and filled with water. The artist explains:

The global projections used to describe climate change can seem abstract and distant. However, on Tuvalu climate change is experienced on an immediate and human scale … This work is a lament to what we are losing.^[8]

Endnotes

1. ^ Angela Tiatia, artist statement, <https://vimeo.com/166296843>, viewed 12 June 2019.