“Museums and collections could be arenas for cultural exchange,” artist Rosanna Raymond says, “going outside the boundary of the space into everyday life.” For Border Zones, Raymond created an installation comprising projected images on masi, or tapa cloth, based on Samoan tatau, the body, and the ethnographic observations (projections) of MOA’s founding collector, Frank Burnett. Related to this is the performance piece she developed for the opening celebration of the exhibition, in which she reprised her role of the “Tusky Maiden” to confront viewers with their own conceptions of cultural boundaries and expectations.

When asked by the curator how she would describe Cling to the Sea in terms of a question it asks, Rosanna answered, “What was the Upeti [Samoan artifact] thinking when it met Frank Burnett?”

Raymond describes herself as a multi-media artist, storyteller, poet, and performance/body-adornment artist. A New Zealand-born Pacific Islander of Samoan descent, she currently lives and works in London, UK. Raymond has forged a role over the past 15 years as a producer of and commentator on contemporary urban Pacific Island culture, and is a founding member of the performance art collective Pacific Sisters. She recently co-curated and participated as an artist in the exhibition Pacifika Styles at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.