Dan TAULapapa mcmullin

Visual Artist and Poet

“To enter Samoan-American poet Dan Taulapapa McMullin’s poems is to swim deep within the unspeakable dangers and vibrant life of Moana, the literal and figurative ocean.” --Slope

“A poetic corrective to the West’s violent appropriations and erasures.” --Hyperallergic Magazine

“This is actually modern poetry at its essence: an ongoing test of language’s limits.” --Partisan Magazine

A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia

An original form of graphic novel, a conceptual art book, a series of diptychs in installation, A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia is all these, and is based on years of historical research by conceptual poet Dan Taulapapa McMullin, a resident of Hudson who is from Eastern Samoa in the South Pacific. Mahu is the general term for non-binary people of Hawai’i and Tahiti in Western Polynesia, while Fa’afafine or Fakafafine are terms from Eastern Polynesia. Despite European and American colonization, disease, war, enslavement, anti-queer law, and globalization, Polynesia’;s queer culture nonetheless survived to influence the beginnings of Gay Liberation when during World War II, American soldiers and sailors in the Pacific encountered Indigenous societies where Mahu and Fa’afafine non-binary people were integrated in their families and cultures. A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia narrates through images, in a chronology of narration, the conflict between Western suppression of Mahu and Fa’afafine cultures and their survival today, where the Indigenous future is inspired by the pre-colonial past, and by all our transgender, non-binary and queer ancestors.

BIO

Dan Taulapapa McMullin is an artist and poet from Eastern Samoa, whose book of poems Coconut Milk (2013) was on the American Library Association Rainbow List Top Ten Books of the Year. His most recent book Samoan Queer Lives (2018), was co-edited with Yuki Kihara. Taulapapa’s performance poem The Bat and other early works received a 1997 Poets&Writers Award from The Writers Loft. His artwork was in exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, De Young Museum, Oakland Museum, Bishop Museum, the United Nations, Auckland Art Gallery, and Musée du quai Branly. His film Sinalela won the 2002 Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival Best Short Film Award.

Taulapapa’s film 100 Tikis is an appropriation work about tiki kitsch and indigenous sovereignty, it was the opening night film of the 2016 Présence Autochtone First Peoples Festival in Montréal; and was an official selection in the Fifo International Film Festival in Tahiti; and Pacifique Festival Rochefort in France. He is currently working on a novel and a suite of collages reflecting on the queer history of Polynesia, and co-editing a a queer Pacific Islander anthology entitled Queernesia. Taulapapa’s art studio and writing practice is based in Hudson, New York, where he lives with his partner. More on his work can be found at taulapapa.com.