AITU Series Presents Mata‘AITU (voyeur) by Lindah Lepou™

Acclaimed fa’afafine artist Lindah Lepou weaves her Samoan gafa (genealogy) into Pacific couture as a living fashion art archive. Works of remembrance and resistance honour AITU (spirit ancestors) and fa’afafine as multidimensional gender archetypes – transporting, transforming and enduring.

Mata‘AITU (voyeur) is the second in a new AITU series that has developed from Lepou’s recent research trip to Siamani (Germany). During that time, Lepou re-examined ethnographic histories and the colonial violence of human zoos, where Indigenous peoples were displayed, watched and made to perform for Western audiences. Through design, photography, film and digital media, Lepou’s work turns the gaze back on the viewer, confronting voyeurism, surveillance, fetishisation and the uneasy threshold between human rights and dehumanisation. Here, the politics of Big Brother – of watching and being watched – are laid bare, with Lepou exploring the transitions from museum to social media and how the digital world has become a new kind of zoo.

Artist Bio
An Aotearoa NZ born, Porirua and Sāmoa-raised fa’afafine, Lindah Lepou was the winner of the 2022 Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate for the inaugural LGBTQA+ Queer Award and the winner of the Creative NZ Pacific Aniva Artist Resident Award at the Govett-Brewster Gallery in Taranaki (2025). Lepou has been a guest judge for the WOW World of Wearable Art Awards, and in recognition of her more than 30-years of working within Pacific couture, exhibited alongside Dior, Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano. Her visual language draws inspiration from Pacific and European gafa (genealogies), using indigenous techniques and materials in contemporary ways.

Photo Credit: Lindah Lepou, AITU series, 2026. Image by Lisa Fa’alafi (FALE'AITU)