Still Here: Episode 4 - Tyla and the Teles

Tyla Vaeau is an award winning artist dedicating much of her research and practice to Sāmoan tatau and wider Moana tattoo motifs.

She is the first Sāmoan woman tattooist to be gifted the ‘au and is widely considered to be the only female tufuga tatau practitioner working in Aotearoa. She co-runs Vaeau family studio with her brother, Hiram, out of their family home in Grey Lynn. 

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“Coming full circle and setting the studio back up in the family home in Central Auckland in Grey Lynn has been really significant because it's maintained and reconnected a lot of the Pasifika connections to this area.

And the significance of growing up in this area during that time with those communities and being back here and being able to give back to those communities through the work that I'm doing has been really important” - Tyla Vaeau