Yuki Kihara is a Japanese-Sāmoan interdisciplinary artist living and working in Sāmoa. Her practice includes performance, photography, film, sculpture, textiles, writing and curatorial projects. Kihara examines colonial histories, gender, identity, ecology and the political representation of Pacific communities, often reworking archival images and familiar cultural formats to expose the assumptions they contain. This continuing development gives the work a clear place within current independent artistic practice.
Performance and staged photography allow Kihara to place contemporary Pacific perspectives inside historical visual systems that were frequently created by outsiders. Other projects address climate change, tourism, migration and the relationship between land, ocean and community. Current work listed for 2025 and 2026 includes Stories From the Weather, Winds of Change and Moana Queer Taxonomy, demonstrating an active international practice across several media. Kihara’s projects combine research, humour and critical analysis without separating cultural history from present-day experience. By working from Sāmoa while engaging museums and audiences internationally, she challenges the idea that Pacific art should be interpreted only through external institutions. Her work makes self-representation, environmental knowledge and Indigenous perspectives central to contemporary artistic debate.