The Veiqia Project 10 Year exhibition

This year The Veiqia Project (TVP) will be heading to Fiji Museum to mark our 10-year anniversary with a new exhibition, Na Cagi Ni Veisau (The Winds of Change). The exhibition centres liku (fibre skirts) as a cultural signifier of womanhood. Through collaborative weaving, storytelling, and ceremony, we will honour the milestones in a Fijian woman’s life, from first menstruation, motherhood through to elderly.

This exhibition is a continuation of The Veiqia Project’s decade-long journey, bringing together traditional and contemporary materials to celebrate cultural resilience. 

We are currently fundraising to support our return home to Fiji, to collaborate with our communities, and to create new work for the exhibition opening in November 2025.

Artists in Na Cagi Ni Veisau exhibition: Margaret Aull, Donita Hulme, Yasbelle Kerkow, Ana Luvuiwasawasa, Lucie Managrieve, Joana Monolagi, Mere Rasue, Dulcie Stewart, Luisa Tora, Joana Waqa, and Sikiti Waqabaca.

The Veiqia Project is an Indigenous Fijian women creative research collective, who are based in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

Through art-making, exhibitions, research, and community engagement, The Veiqia Project has created space for Indigenous Fijian women to reconnect with veiqia, reclaiming a practice once considered tabu (taboo). Our work has helped bring veiqia back into public consciousness, no longer hidden, but proudly visible on our women’s bodies.

The collective includes: Donita Vatuinaruku Hulme, Dulcie Stewart, Margaret Aull, Joana Monolagi, Luisa Keteiyau Tora, Dr Tarisi Vunidilo, and Yasbelle Kerkow.

The Veiqia Project has received a generous grant from Creative Australia but it doesn't fully cover the costs of producing the exhibition. We're calling on our community to help us realise this important exhibition. 

Your contribution will directly support:

• Exhibition production

Support up to 12 new works being made
Materials for creating theses works
Travel and accommodation for artists to install and attend the opening

• Documentation and legacy

  Documentation of the exhibition

• Public programming 

TVP will be providing a community day, panel discussions, designing education resources, and liku making workshops as part of our exhibition.

Since 2015, we have used creative research methodologies to connect through art, storytelling, and community engagement, centering the traditional practice of veiqia, the tattooing of Fijian girls at puberty.

We have produced exhibitions and collaborated across many communities whilst sharing information and research on our online platforms.

This year, we are collaborating with weavers and artisans in Fiji to create a new suite of works that revitalise the weaving of liku and the ceremonial practice of veiqia. 

Historically, liku were woven for women throughout their lives and held deep cultural significance, especially at the time of receiving their qia (tattoo). These practices, once revered, were disrupted by colonisation and Christianisation. Our aim is to honour and reinvigorate them as expressions of Fijian womanhood and identity.

The practice of veiqia was suppressed for nearly a century. Alongside it, we lost rituals, chants, meke, language, and the art of making liku. This exhibition is not just about textiles; it’s about reviving knowledge and reclaiming identity alongside our marks of mana.

By supporting this campaign, you are helping us reconnect with ancestral practices, empower women through cultural expression and create space for intergenerational learning.

Through your support we will be able to present our work back home to our families, community and people.