Raymond Sagapolutele is a New Zealand born Sāmoan artist with family ties to the villages of Fatuvalu in Savai’i and Saluafata in Upolu, Sāmoa. He picked up the camera in 2003 and began a self- taught photography journey that would see him work with editorial publications Back to Basics and Rip It Up as a staff photographer as well as submissions to the NZ Herald and Metro Magazine.
Sagapolutele completed his Masters in Visual Arts in 2019, with first-class honours and received the Deans Award for Excellence in Postgraduate study from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT). Sagapolutele states ‘My time researching as a visual arts post-grad student afforded me the space and time to consider my position and place as a Sāmoan born in New Zealand, when framed around structures of identity. Having the time to critically assess what it meant to grow up as part of a Pacific diaspora included decoding the subtle ways I had learned cultural contexts through lived ways of being. This could include participating in family functions where fa’a Sāmoa, or the Sāmoan way, is applied. It could also be something as simple as a story passed on from grandmother to grandson.
It was the echo of a story from my grandmother that connected my past to my present-day research and the practice of reinterring the dead, liutofaga that would see me once again re-examine the way we see skulls, or more accurately how we see the bones of our ancestors. In my practice, the skulls are a key element in seeing beyond the dead, being about more than death. I present them as timeless, they hold space for our ancestors to be part of a contemporary conversation that sets the groundwork for what is a possible future.’
For the artist, the camera has become a vital part of his ability to reconnect his art to his heritage as a diasporic Sāmoan with cultural ties that link him to the history of the Pacific and the land within that vast ocean. The camera is how his visual language is given a voice, the method that forms his oratory and connects to the Samoan tradition of Fāgogo (storytelling).