I was talking with friends one evening and the topic of humanity and current world affairs arose. The conversation concluded much later with one asking, ‘What are we coming to as a species?' Andy Leleisi'uao.
Opening Speakers:
Ben Bergman, Director, Bergman Gallery
Samantha Beckett, Deputy New Zealand High Commissioner, Cook Islands
Today the world sits at an ideological precipice. The Middle East remains entangled in tribal, religious and geopolitical struggle; the United States wrestles with internal fractures shaped by race, identity and fundamentalism; and Europe contends with the humanitarian and philosophical consequences that follow in their wake.
Set against this backdrop is the expansive Omniverse of Andy Leleisi'uao. Borrowed from Western comic mythology, the Omniverse describes an all-encompassing reality in which every universe—real or imagined—coexists. It is not a difficult analogy to extend into the present moment, where global politics often feel as improbable and exaggerated as fiction itself.
Leleisi’uao constructs his own parallel worlds through a series of fictional villages—Alofa, Aroá, Aloha and Aroha—each grounded in a utopian logic that has long underpinned his practice. Across these paintings, human-like figures exist in constant motion: gathering oversized flowers, building infrastructure, travelling across land and sky, their activity unfolding beneath the quiet surveillance of hovering UFOs. It is a society defined by interdependence, where collective purpose overrides individual conflict.
In contrast to the instability that shapes contemporary political life, these worlds propose an alternative order—one that is industrious, cooperative and curiously insulated. The noise of global power struggles dissipates here, replaced by a system that appears to function on entirely different terms.
