I guess I will see you again, 2018
Inkjet prints framed
420mm x 594mm
In late 2017 I took a trip with my family to my Grandmother's homeland of the Cook Islands in the Pacific. Although I had been to Rarotonga once before I never had the opportunity to meet my Grandmother who passed away when my Mother was eighteen. On this trip I documented everything through photographs, moving image and writing in an attempt to understand or make sense of our ever changing relationship to land, place, history and identity.
It was interesting to try and find connections within the ancestral landscape of a Grandmother often spoken about but never met. Perhaps it doesn't matter that I never met her and that all I knew was a handful (Grandma removing the skin of KFC chicken because Mum didn't like it, the way my Aunty described her exhausted face as she bit into an orange mere moments before her first stroke, the way she liked to wear bright colours and painted the lounge in the family home pink) of stories passed down from my Mother and her siblings.
Maybe the stories are enough.
Maybe the way my heart aches when I stand on land in Aitutaki and feel the sweat dripping down my neck is enough.
Maybe the way the sky colours as the sun is setting and I think that only here does it ever look like that is enough.
Maybe lying under a ceiling fan listening to the storm outside is enough.
In memory of Tutai'i (Lucy) Timo