HUMANS OF THE ISLANDS - ATUETA RABUKA
FIJIAN
ARTIST
Please introduce yourself, your Pacific heritage and where you grew up?
Bula Vinaka, my name is Atueta Rabuka. I’m a Fijian artist from Nausori. I don’t know what is meant by “my Pacific heritage”. Some gang have connections to five Pacific Island countries that makes my connections to Fiji and Tonga feel inadequate... lol... and I don’t even know much about my Tongan side, only that my grandmother on my dad’s side is Tongan... wait, let’s just answer the question. I’m Fijian.
My village: Molituva, Kuku. Coz like Kuku is one village that has three villages in it, it gets complicated. My Yavusa (clan): Burekalou. My Mataqali (sub clan): Bureta. From here we can go to my maternal connections and then down the list of all the trees, flowers, fish and animals that are associated with me and my kin... is that heritage or does it mean where I grew up? We’ll just answer both.
So there’s Nausori, Suva and Lautoka... but I feel I didn’t just grow up in a few places but by many layers of people, stories and environments. I’m sorry, I’m coming off of watching this play in Wellington titled Aqua Nullius: Toe Fai and Talaucaka... seriously, if you’re in Wellington check it out... but io, that play got me thinking about my identity, you know? How your identity isn’t just you, you’re your grandparents, your village, your shoreline, the people who fed you, corrected you, gave you a hiding in public and prayed for you in private... that’s all the gang you carry but rarely acknowledge in an introduction.
Anyway, yes, so I grew up between Urban Fiji and Rural Fiji. A lot about me sits in between those two worlds too. One foot in traffic and WiFi and the other in dusty gravel farm roads listening to cows moo.
Tell us about your journey into the arts?
I don’t think I found art, I think it was always there, I just embraced it ga once I stopped pretending I could just do it on the side and be content.
Before becoming a full time artist I worked across media, design, audio and video production, copywriting and motion graphics... basically the “you know Photoshop right?” Then you end up directing, editing, driving and coiling cables too. A lot of my learning was on the job because in Fiji, if you’re in this field, you can’t wait for the perfect conditions.
That’s what I learned after looking back... I mean whenever I’m asked this question I always realise that in the beginning... lol... in the beginning I wasn’t set on “right, this will be the path, I will undertake this journey and become an artist”. It was “I need to learn this if I need to do that and I need to do that so I get paid”.
I did in fact go to an art school, one of the two places back then that taught the arts. Now there’s only graphics. Yes, so back then there was the Fiji Institute of Technology’s School of Arts, Culture and Design. I did a diploma course in Visual Arts that I didn’t finish because I dropped out and opted for a career in Radio production. I did media production for 12 years before sacrificing my security and financial stability to the art gods and becoming a full time artist.
What or who inspires you to create?
Everything I guess... I’m asked this question a lot and it’s not that I don’t know how to answer, sometimes I’m worried I might seem weird or just saying things to sound artsy and all lol... but io, it’s everything... life maybe we can say it’s life that inspires me? Life in the Pacific.
Coz the Pacific isn’t just sea, sand and sunshine or that postcard image, the Pacific is also grief, migration, colonisation, resilience, mythology, ceremony, rising seas, staying awake to sing the church hymns but falling asleep during the sermon, diesel fumes, grog sessions, even at funerals waiting for one aunty to start her sentence with, “I had a weird dream last night”.
I’m inspired by the older generation who speak slow and carefully. The even older generation that speaks the Queen’s English coz that was the gang’s education system. Fishermen. Market vendors. Devil stories over a basin of juice. Practice grog sessions for kids... it’s called smack juice. Firelight. Protest movements. Graffiti. Music. The way Pacific people can laugh during hardship.
I am inspired by life... I know how pretentious that sounds but that’s it. These things are my reality, they’re happening around me and make me feel or react to them. I internalise to an unhealthy degree so when I’m going through feels and reactions I’m also thinking why the f*** am I feeling like this... if I’m uncomfortable I turn to creating to distract myself, if I feel happy I turn to creating just coz it feels good to draw in that state... if I’m grog doped, I create... escape plans.
Tell us about your prints, how and when you started.
The idea was always there, then towards the end of last year we had this fundraising drive for our trip to Adelaide and we were asked to contribute something, so I said I’d give five A3 sized Fiji themed card prints.
Why cards? I just liked the idea that 1. something ordinary could quietly carry culture into people’s homes and 2. I can create something that I’d love on my walls. At first I honestly underestimated how people would respond. I thought maybe a few friends would buy them and my aunties would politely tell me they were nice, but in just a month the prints travelled further than I expected, both locally and internationally.
From that initial five, it spread and people wanted other specific card suits, specific themes and it’s just been rolling from there.
Later, when people asked about the details, say for example the Grace of Spades/Queen of Spades... she has the moon depicted in her hair. In Fiji sometimes we refer to the moon as Adi Vula, and so I just paired that with something from our history where we used to follow a lunar calendar.
When I explain these things gang say stuff like “whoaa so cool” or when I point out for tourists the veiqia or traditional markings/tattoos for Fijian women, and that only women are allowed to get them, they’d go “whoaa so cool”. In person I’d be all shy and looking down being all humble and shit when inside I’m doing jumping jacks and pirouettes.
You said you once dreamt of a recluse life in the bush creating art. Is this still a dream of yours?
Boy that was a long time ago... lol... such good memory you have... io absolutely, I still fantasize about disappearing into the mountains and emerging out of the bush every six months holding strange paintings like one forest prophet... lol.
But over the years I realised something important, isolation can help you hear yourself but community helps you understand why your voice matters. So now the dream has evolved coz I also want to contribute to the conversations happening in the Pacific right now.
I’ve been blessed enough to sit and illustrate for meetings that determine how Pacific infrastructure is planned, spaces where the issues discussed are around identity, environment and the future we’re leaving behind. Gonna be a bit hard to participate in these spaces if I’m living deep in a jungle that’s five hours up from the base of a mountain that’s a three hour drive from the nearest town.
So the dream has evolved to be somewhere in between, like up a treehouse in a forest 30 minutes away from town.
What do you want other young Pacific artists to take from your journey and/or art?
- Don’t wait for permission.
A lot of Pacific artists are more capable than they realise. I think, and I may be wrong, it’s just the way I see it, we’ve inherited systems that sometimes make us feel like legitimacy only comes from overseas validation. Your voice already matters before a gallery, institution or algorithm notices you.
- Research your culture deeply. Not superficially. Go beyond aesthetics. Learn the stories, contradictions, politics and spirituality underneath things. Don’t just do things coz that’s where the funding is. I’m still guilty of this so I understand if you’ll guise this. But I guess that research is gonna come from a genuine curiosity into who you are and what peoples you came from.
- Speaking of curiosity, protect your curiosity. The internet rewards speed and trends, but meaningful art often grows slowly. I’m partly saying this because I’m trying to convince myself that this is why my social media isn’t growing... lol. But seriously, sometimes your greatest ideas come after failure, confusion or periods where you think you’re making terrible work. That’s normal. Every artist has made work so bad they considered becoming something else other than an artist.
What’s next for you? What projects do you have coming up?
Right now I’m prepping for exhibitions, two so far... one this year and one next year. I still have to complete the print series, as well as complete the deck of playing cards, some live illustration gigs and two murals.
All works will be around Pacific cosmology, environmental memory and contemporary identity. Fancy way of saying that at the moment I’m absolutely “vesumona’d” in discovering our old belief systems, spiritual connections to the Vanua. Vanua/Fenua here meaning more than just land, Vanua being “the physical representation of nature’s spirit”. Those aren’t my words, I’m paraphrasing from what Dr Asesela Ravuvu wrote... incredible work, check it out when you can.
Anyway, there’s all that and in between, I’m still trying to figure out how to balance being an artist with replying to emails before three business months pass. That may be my greatest creative challenge yet.