“I want this work to reflect the joy and mild obsession that I feel every time I learn a new story, like a kid picking up a good comic for the first time.”
This exhibition dissects and reimagines Samoan mythology using science-fiction tropes and imagery, to blend her fascination with culture and speculative storytelling. This interest is spurred on and contributes to a growing cannon of Pacific Futurism, inspired by Afrofuturism movements, which reposition our ancestral stories from relics of the past into potentials for our future.
Katie’s imagines a future of floating cities, wayfinding through stars, space-waka (canoe) and tatau (tattoos) that move and glow. Like so many other mixed-race diasporic children who are displaced from their cultural homelands, Katie is always learning more about Samoa through her family and the strong Pacific community in Meanjin.
Katie Rasch (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and artsworker, working predominantly with photography and digital art on unceded Yuggera and Turrubal land. She explores speculative myth making through the lens of Pacifika Futurism to return to decolonial narratives.
She often creates work with the goal of creating representation and reconnecting with the cultural pride she yearned for as a young child. Through this, Katie playfully draws from her connections within the Pacifika and Queer Meanjin community to explore her cultural learnings, championed by optimism and hope.
Image: Detail, Tapuitea by Katie Rasch. Image courtesy of the artist.
