Arts writer Ioana Gordon-Smith (New Zealand, Sāmoa) lives in Porirua and currently works as Lead Curator at Pātaka Art+Museum. Here, Ioana responds to the legacy of the trope of the Dusky Maiden as well as Te Papa’s short films from We Are Not Your Dusky Maidens!
The illusion of these makeshift flowers
Grandma was the last of the weavers in my family. A proud Sāmoan woman who refused to speak English even after living in Aotearoa for decades, she used to weave fala using dried palm fronds that fell onto our front yard in Johnsonville. She would also make ‘ula – but her materials for these came not from the lawn. Instead, stacks of recycled egg trays would pile up until Grandma was ready to get to work. She’d cut out each square, incise a circle of pointy triangles around the top edge, and paint them maroon red – two shades darker than an ‘ulafala. Then she’d string dozens together, nesting the cardboard-flowers inside each other to make a full floral garland that was hung over framed photos on the wall.
Grandma was always finding low-fi, cheap hijacks to adorn our home. Flowers emerged again through her hands, this time fashioned from clothes hangers. She would shape their wire frames into oversized petals and stretch coloured pantyhose over the edges. Bound together, the petals became flowers that in turn became unscented bouquets held in vases without water.
The illusion of these makeshift flowers was never real for me as a kid. I could never lose sight of the materials – grey cardboard, red varnish, bright pantyhose of uncertain origin (I never did see anyone in my family wear pink or purple stockings). I always wondered why Grandma was single-mindedly driven to transform these janky materials into new possibilities. Words like resourcefulness, or resilience, or adaptiveness weren’t in my vocab at the time. Instead, I just saw Grandma as strong-willed, unflappably driven to create beauty in the home when adornment was beyond the budget.
The knowledge economy sourcing flowers
I didn’t know it then, but I certainly do now: cut flowers are expensive. Today, flowers are my mum’s domain. She’s part of a rotation of volunteers who teu the church. For me, church is an underrated botanical hotspot. There, you’ll find ula carried up for the taulaga, large-scale floral arrangements placed around the altar, and garlands draped on the lectern. These fresh floral displays are true artistry. You learn this a) if you ever try to make one yourself, and b) when you experience the panic of needing a casket spray or have to make an ula on the fly.
There’s a whole knowledge economy underpinning the resourcing of flowers, too. Grenada – home to the Moore Wilsons of garden shops [UFG Wholesale?] – is where you get the best flower bargains. Pete’s Emporium is where you get the oasis. Then there’s the informal, whispered network of what flowers grow in people’s homes. Mum might not have Grandma’s knack for upcycling, but she has the same dogged determination. Floral displays were, and continue to be, a hustle. These are adornments created in defiance.
It might feel a stretch to connect Grandma and Mum’s floral endeavours with dusky maidens. After all, their interest didn’t lean towards self-adornment. I can’t remember if Grandma ever wore sei. Mum does, though infrequently.
Instead, Grandma and Mum’s relationship to flowers was directed outwards. Flowers were used not on our bodies, but in the home and church. There’s a close relationship, however, between self-representation and world-building. Homes are an extension of who we are: how we want our houses to be perceived is entangled with how we ourselves want to be seen. So too is church, a community closely connected to our sense of identity. Both Grandma and Mum were and are driven by a simple, though fundamental, desire to elevate their environments. To use beauty as a way to bring pride into their worlds. To make things beautiful, because beauty has an inherent relationship to a deeper, insatiable value.
The legacy of the dusky maiden
The legacy of the dusky maiden, however, shadows beauty with shame. The mythology of the dusky maiden – the perpetually available, hyper-sexualised female body posed for the colonial, male gaze – is well-known.
The response, across these videos, has been to prioritise our own practices and ideas of beauty. Specifically here, it is our flower culture that reinstills our pride in adornment. Grandma and Mum are part of that wider genealogy – a web, a matriarchy – who have always understood that there’s dignity in flowers. It’s why garlands are how we confer honour or recognise significance. For Grandma specifically, it was a means to elevate the family home, to take pride in where she lived. For mum, flowers have always been a form of worship, a means to honour the divine. When I think of Grandma and Mum’s investment in flowers, the dignity they bestowed was everything. It was an objective worth material manipulation, financial sacrifice, and a constant hunt for resources, defying limits to create environments that were beautiful.
I’m not sure either Grandma or Mum were ever anyone’s muse. My existence alone is proof enough they weren’t maidens. But they were makers. Whether through cobbling flowers out of junk or raiding gardens, they’ve both always been driven by some internal, defiant will to adorn the things they care about and to live in a world of dignity. They were never passive objects of beauty. They were its engineers.
Watch We Are Not Your Dusky Maidens!
Watch the five interviews with Pacific women on the trope of the sensual ‘dusky maiden’ and the significance of flower culture in the Pacific Islands. Then read about how the project came about, and responses to the videos from four Pacific women in the arts.
We Are Not Your Dusky Maidens! on Te Papa’s website.
Ioana Gordon-Smith
Ioana Gordon-Smith (New Zealand/Sāmoa) is an arts writer and curator. She was the Assistant Curator of Yuki Kihara: Paradise Camp at the 59th Venice Biennale, 2022, and was a co-curator of the international Indigenous triennial Naadohbii: To Draw Water (2021-2023). Together with Lana Lopesi, Ioana is the co-founder and co-editor of Marinade: Aotearoa journal of Moana Art. Ioana lives in Porirua and currently works as Lead Curator at Pātaka Art+Museum.
