“A Mother Cries” is an installation-based performance with video projection, touching on regret, grief, and heartache.

The performance is based on the Samoan Ava (Kava) Ceremony, where visitors are welcomed to the community via drinking a ‘tea’ made from the root of the Ava (Kava) plant. Each guest will in turn be conveyed a brew to drink to signify passage into the community via this ritual.

Similarly, each audience member is given a piece of the “A Mother Cries” installation, during the performance, their names will be called out, inviting them to place/add that particular piece on the installation and drink from the offered glass of water.

During these exchanges, another performer is in motion, moving accordingly, feeling the space, the shifts, the openings available for participants to pass through to another plane, another understanding. This performer is a guide, the protector, ever watchful, and non-judgemental, a friend.

“A Mother Cries” was presented as part of my solo exhibition - Savor. Savor is a multi-layered body of work that comprises still and moving images with opportunities, during the course of the season, for viewers to engage with the installation as a performance participant.

Savor is a collection of six stories:

Dissolve Series - Black and white photos with mono print on the frame.

Ethereal Series - Black and white photos.

Fa’afetai (Thank You) Series - Mono prints, acrylics on watercolor paper.

Filemu (Peace) Series - Modified photos.

InWater - a video projection of Dissolve and Ethereal.

A Mother Cries - an installation, with video projection

The layers of meaning encompassed within this anthology, arches from loss; of loved ones, relationships, displacement, identity, grief, expressed within & without the body, what else may arise? Will it be noted? Will it be interrogated? Will it encourage honesty?

To the quiet within, of acknowledgement, of resilience, of letting go, of hope.