Shigeyuki Kihara

Shigeyuki Kihara (b. 1975) is a visual artist and independent curator of Samoan and Japanese heritage. She immigrated to New Zealand from Western Samoa in 1989. In the 1990s after studying Fashion Design and Technology at Wellington Polytechnic she began working as a stylist, an experience that led her to becoming interested in studio photography and art directing.

Her artwork is part of major international public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Ohio, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Her interdisciplinary work engages in variety of social, political, and cultural issues. Often referencing Pacific history, her work explores the varying relationships between gender, race, culture and politics. Kihara has been exhibiting internationally since 2004. Shigeyuki Kihara was a participating artist in the Framer Framed group exhibition Embodied Spaces (2015), curated by Christine Eyene. She was also a guest speaker for the symposium Declassified – How to Un/Engender the Ethnographic Object? (2017), organised in collaboration by the Tropenmuseum and the Research Centre for Material Culture and Framer Framed.

Kihara is representing Aotearoa New Zealand at the 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2022) with her critically acclaimed exhibition entitled Paradise Camp curated by Natalie King. Kihara is a research fellow at the National Museum of World Cultures, the Netherlands.