Artists and Designers

Photo by: Nadya Kwandibens / Artist: Celeste Pedri-Spade

Maori / New Zealand

Pacific Sisters

Discipline:

Craft / Fashion / Textiles

The Pacific Sisters is a collective of Pacific and Māori fashion designers, artists, performers, and musicians that electrified 1990s Auckland, New Zealand. Their ground-breaking style and performances brought the urban lives of a New Zealand–born Pacific generation into the mainstream spotlight. Through pioneering, daring shows, the Pacific Sisters overturned stereotypes about Pacific culture, ‘dusky maiden’ beauty and sexuality. They once described themselves as being like the Polynesian version of Andy Warhol’s factory – an ever-evolving collective of artists coming together to create art, music, fashion, and film. The Pacific Sisters include ground-breaking artists Lisa Reihana, Rosanna Raymond, Ani O’Neill, Suzanne Tamaki, Selina Haami, Nephi Tupaea, Henry Ah-Foo Taripo, Feeonaa Wall, and Jaunnie ‘Ilolahia