Meet Rosanna Raymond MNZM, our 2026 Artist in Residence in Sāmoa: artist, performer, poet and maker whose practice centres on the Vā Body.
For more than three decades, Rosanna Raymond has made her body the meeting place of art and ancestry. Born in Tāmaki Makaurau, of Sāmoan, Tuvaluan, Irish and French descent, she works across movement, sound, body adornment, spoken word and ceremony, and has become one of the most influential voices in contemporary Moana art.
This November she returns to Sāmoa as our 2026 Artist in Residence, at Tiapapata Art Centre in Apia.
In her words
"Movement, sound and the body are central features of my art practice. Together they help me tell stories, both urban and ancient, indigenous and transnational."
"As I have adorned the vā with my body, I adorn my body with the materials and fibres that connect me to the land, sea and sky."
The Vā Body
At the centre of Rosanna's practice is what she calls the Vā Body: a body that shares time and space with the genealogical past, present and future, where ancestors are housed. Through it, she layers adornment, visual art, spoken word, sound, ceremony and performance into a living archive.
Her adorned works are not costumes. She calls them Niu Aitu: fully formed, fleshed-out charismas that carry the mauli (life force) and mana of the stories and genealogies woven into them. Her performances, or acti.VĀ.tions, open a space where the past is brought into the present.
SaVĀge Mama Portrait. Photograph: Salvador Brown, 2025
Collectives and community
Rosanna is a founding member of the Pacific Sisters, the trailblazing collective of Pacific and Māori artists, and the founder of the SaVĀge K'lub, a multidisciplinary platform for art, spoken word and performance first launched at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2010.
Museums and archives
Much of Rosanna's work speaks with museums and their collections, activating Pacific taonga and the spaces that hold them. She has held residencies at institutions including the University of Hawaiʻi, the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, and is an honorary research associate at University College London. Her work is held by Te Papa Tongarewa and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, which also holds her Eyeland Archive.
Acti.VĀ.tion: Backhand Maiden – Your House or Mine. Photograph: Richard Wade, 2019
Recognition
• Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM), 2023 New Year Honours, for services to Pacific art
• Senior Pacific Artist Award, Arts Pasifika Awards, 2018
What's next
Rosanna completed her master's at Auckland University of Technology in 2021 and is now in the second year of a PhD there, exploring the afterlife of archives through a body-centred practice. Her Sāmoa residency, Fafauina ma lo'u Ata — Bound together with my shadow, will shape the final installation and acti.VĀ.tion of that research: a ceremony, procession and celebration moving the mauli of her Eyeland Archive from Auckland Art Gallery to St Paul St Gallery in November 2027.
Read about the Sāmoa residency → https://www.pacificdance.org.nz/rosanna-raymond-samoa-residency-2026
Quick Facts
Heritage: Sāmoan, Tuvaluan, Irish, French
Based: Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), NZ
Practice: Movement, sound, body adornment, spoken word, ceremony
Collectives: Pacific Sisters (founding member), SaVĀge K'lub (founder)
Honours: MNZM (2023); Senior Pacific Artist Award (2018)
Follow: https://www.instagram.com/rosannaraymond/
