NINA TONGA

BIO
Nina Tonga (PhD, University of Auckland) is an art historian and curator of contemporary art. Professor Tonga is from the villages of Vaini and Kolofo’ou in the Kingdom of Tonga and was born and raised in Aotearoa New Zealand. She specializes in contemporary Pacific art and visual culture, with a particular focus on gender, representation, and the connections and intercultural relationships between Pacific Island nations and diaspora communities within a local and global context. Her interdisciplinary PhD research focused on the ways that Internet platforms have shaped and influenced contemporary art practices, contrasting the work of a range of artists including Māori, Pacific, Asian, First Nations and Indigenous Australian artists.

Professor Tonga has a long history as a curator and writer in relation to Pacific art and visual culture.  Her academic writing, reviews, media commentary, and blogs have addressed a range of areas including indigenous photographic histories, the Dawn Raids, engaging Pacific peoples in museums, and the influence of popular culture in the Pacific. She curated the acclaimed exhibitions Pacific Sisters: Fashion Activists (2018-2019) at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and To Make Wrong/ Right/ Now (2019), at the second international Honolulu Biennial. Her curated solo exhibitions include projects by Lemi Ponifasio, Nike Savvas, Chiharu Shiota and Mataaho Collective. Other curatorial projects include Home AKL (2012) at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Tonga i Onopooni (2014) at Pataka Art + Museum and Make/Shift (2010) at St Paul Street Gallery. From 2017-2019 she was the inaugural Curator of Pacific Art at Te Papa and from 2019-2023 she was the Curator of Contemporary art at Te Papa.

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Art History / University of Auckland / 2022
M.A. in Art History / University of Auckland / 2008
B.A. (Hons) in Art History / University of Auckland / 2008

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
• Robin White: Something is Happening Here, Wellington: Te Papa Press. 2022.
• With Caroline Vercoe. ‘Maori and Pacific Art at the Turn of a New Millennium’ In A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework, edited by Jane Chin Davidson, Amelia Jones and Dana Arnold, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2024.
• ‘Looping through time and space: observations of Māori moving image out in the world’ in Māori Moving Image, Bridget Reweti and Melanie Oliver eds. Christchurch: Christchurch Art Gallery, 2022.
• ‘The Single Object: The Cultural History of the Toby’s Seafood Uniform,’ Spinoff, 2022
• ‘Bridget Reweti: Pōkai Whenua, Pōkai Moana’ in Art New Zealand, December 2021.
• ‘Recurring Ships: Sites of Resistance and Resilience’ in Jasmine Togo-Brisby: Hom Swit Hom, Mackay: Artspace Mackay, Mackay Regional Council, Australia. 2021.
• ‘E tūhura ana i te wairua o te wahine toa | Exploring woman as warrior. Curating Pacific Fashion Activism’ in ATE Journal of Māori Art, Volume II, 2020.
• With Sean Mallon. ‘Materialising German-Samoan Legacies’ in Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses. Philipp Schorch ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2020.
• ‘The Single Object: The wood planks that hid Polynesian students from the police’, Spinoff, 2019.

COURSES TAUGHT
ART 400C (Contemporary Pacific Art)
ART 475C (Pacific Art: Polynesia/Micronesia)