By Ali Ikram
In a week where shipping containers turning up in odd places was a portent of disaster, a collection of them appearing in Auckland’s Aotea Square was something of a surprise.
We use terms like ‘pig headed’ and ‘dirty pig’ despite the swine being both remarkably intelligent, not to mention clean.
Misunderstood, indeed, but even with our supposedly superior intellect we sometimes struggle to make sense of some things.
For hours man circles pig mimicking it's behaviour. First they keep their distance but gradually get closer before eventually coming to understand one another.
French rugby fan Jean-Marie Lapeyre says "it is a reincarnation; he was a pig and he's a man and in this situation he doesn’t want to be a man, he wants to return to the origin, volia!”
He is Tongan artist Kalisolaite Uhila and the pig's name is ‘colonist’. On one of the breaks he will take in eight days living in the pen. He explained.
"The pig is the colonist on his turf in his space and for me to come in and cohabit with the pig in his space is like sharing and trying to understand where one another is coming from.”
Pigs were introduced to Tonga by European explorers and now their abundance at a feast is a sign of social status.
The poignancy of the work won the best visual arts prize at the Auckland Fringe Festival but working with a new piglet meant breaking the ice this afternoon.
The whole thing is part of the Performance Arcade; seven shipping containers, seven installations, over eight days.
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