Moe Laga’s “Fetū x Fetu’u” Is a One-Night-Only Celestial Reckoning
Moe Laga, the revered performance artist, mother, healer and fearless fa’afafine voice from South Auckland, returns to the stage with Fetū x Fetu’u — a powerful solo work premiering for one night only as part of F.O.L.A. [AKL].
The piece was developed during Moe’s three-month ANIVA residency at Pātaka Museum in Porirua, supported by Creative New Zealand. It became a space for deep reflection and transformation.
“Fetū x Fetu’u is a solo performance work born out of my time as the ANIVA...Over three months, I was given space to reflect, grieve, and shed skin,” Moe says.
“This work is deeply personal, a constellation of stories, ancestors, curses, and blessings. It draws from my experiences as a Samoan fa’afafine born in Aotearoa, navigating the sacred and the profane, the celestial and the shadow. The title itself speaks to duality — Fetū (stars/light) and Fetu’u (curses/darkness). It came about because I needed a space where all of me could exist.”
Fetū x Fetu’u is presented in collaboration with Cypris Afakasi — a Māori and Samoan, Irakē interdisciplinary performance artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Known for their vibrant engagement with Ballroom culture and performance art, Cypris’s work explores spirituality, gender expression and identity, grounded in lived experiences as a person of colour and member of the LGBTQ+ community.
The process of creating the work has been intense and revealing. “It’s been tender. Raw. At times, terrifying and sometimes painful. But it’s also been deeply affirming,” she says. “This work has asked me to be still with myself, to sit in the vā between memory and performance, pain and power. I’ve had to let go of perfection, of pleasing others, and lean into my truth. It’s been about returning to the body as oracle, archive, and altar.”
One of the shifts Moe reflects on is how her relationship with sexuality has evolved. “Young Moe was wild — chaotic, fierce, unapologetic — but also deeply wounded,” she says.
“My early expressions of sexuality were often shaped by survival, by the gaze, by rebellion. Over time, and through healing, I’ve begun to see my sexuality not just as performance or provocation, but as a sacred language. Fetū x Fetu’u honours that. It’s sensual, yes — but it’s also reverent. It holds the erotic as ancestral, as divine. This shift didn’t happen overnight. It came from unlearning shame, from reclaiming my own pleasure, and recognising that my body is not just something to be consumed — it is something to be witnessed with care.”
Fetū x Fetu’u journeys through themes of grief, god/s, taboos, sex, pop-cultural witchery and the vā. Moe invites audiences to feel, not just observe.
“I want people to feel something. To be moved. To sit in the discomfort and the beauty. To recognise the divine in the messy,” she says. “I hope Fetū x Fetu’u becomes a mirror — not just for queer, Moana, or fa’afafine audiences, but for anyone who has ever felt split between worlds.”
“I want people to leave with more questions than answers. I want them to feel the pulse of the ancestors, the glitter of the cosmos, the weight of the body — and to know that all of it can exist at once. That we can be stars and curses, light and shadow, holy and haunted — and still be worthy of love.”
Presented as part of F.O.L.A. [AKL] — a festival built by and for artists — Fetū x Fetu’u finds its home among the bold, the experimental and the boundary-pushers. Curated by Nisha Madhan, Julia Croft, Nahyeon Lee and Hannah Moore, F.O.L.A. provides a space for the misfits and the magic-makers of Tāmaki Makaurau.
Fetū x Fetu’u is showing for one night only. It’s not just a performance. It’s an offering. A reckoning. A glittering, guttural hymn to the body, the ancestors and the stars.
Get your tickets HERE