Narcissus 2019 reimagines the ancient Greco-Roman myth of Narcissus, in which a beautiful young man falls in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water.
The cast of 40 Narcissi occupy a single platform in various acts of self-worship, ritual, joy, love, lust, complacency, despair and disregard in a single moment of shared time. Here, vulnerabilities, frustrations, flaws and strengths are shown as a collective effect, where various acts and emotions highlight and amplify uncertain and challenging times ahead.
Angela Tiatia is a Sydney-based artist who works across video, photography and performance. Tiatia's work explores contemporary culture, drawing attention to its relationship to representation, gender, neo-colonialism and the commodification of the body and place, often through the lenses of history and popular culture.
She was the recipient of a Sidney Myer Fellowship in 2019, the Creative New Zealand Contemporary Pacific Artist Award in 2018 and was awarded the final Ian Potter Moving Image Commission for 2022. Her work has been shown in major national and international exhibitions including After the Fall, National Museum of Singapore (2017); Countercurrents, Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide (2017); Personal Structures, a collateral exhibition of the 57th Venice Biennial (2017); Under the Sun, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2017); 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT 8), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane (2015/16); and Turangawaewae: Art and New Zealand, Toi Art, Gallery of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand (2018).