‘The value of recognition is being seen’: Manuha’apai Vaeatangitau wins Emerging Pacific Artist Award

‘The value of recognition is being seen’: Manuha’apai Vaeatangitau wins Emerging Pacific Artist Award

“The value of recognition is being seen as a meaningful contributor to culture, to art, and to the life of my fellow people.”

Tongan interdisciplinary artist Manuha’apai (Manu Vaea) Vaeatangitau has been named the recipient of the Emerging Pacific Artist Award at the 2026 Arts Pasifika Awards.

The Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist is among this year’s recipients being recognised as Creative New Zealand celebrates 30 years of the annual awards, which acknowledge Pacific excellence and achievement across the arts.

Vaeatangitau says recognition matters in a region whose artists and contributions can still be overlooked or misunderstood.

“I think we live in this incredible nook of the world that for the most part is largely unknown, and largely misinterpreted,” she says.

“Even within our context, in Aotearoa, there is so much our people have offered that has been integrated into the cultural zeitgeist, that has long gone unrecognised.”

Vaeatangitau’s practice spans illustration, painting, performance, writing and screen. Her work engages with eroticism, critical fabulation and diaristic accounts to reassert queer Pacific identities within social and cultural contexts.

She says moving between different art forms allows her to find the medium best suited to expressing what she is trying to communicate.

“I’m disloyal to form but am always trying to communicate a feeling that is at whatever time in my life, true,” she says.

“I’m always bouncing between writing, performance, and visual mediums to discern which can best capture that truth.”

Her multidisciplinary practice also reflects the complexity of Pacific stories, she says.

“I think being multidisciplinary for someone of my circumstance is necessary because our stories aren’t simple, so we must turn every faucet and gauge life through every source.”

Vaeatangitau says her practice will continue to change as she does.

“I think my process will continue to shift and evolve for as long as I have the capacity to think and make.”

She joins a strong line-up of Pacific artists and creatives recognised in this year’s awards, including multidisciplinary artist and cultural practitioner Julia Mage’au Gray, who receives the Senior Pacific Artist Award, Benjamin Work, recipient of the Pacific Contemporary Artist Award, and The Black Grace Trust, recipient of the Pacific Arts Business Award.

The 30th anniversary Arts Pasifika Awards ceremony will be held in Tāmaki Makaurau on 22 October.