Lana Lopesi
Dr. Lana Lopesi MZNM is a critic of art and culture based in Tāmaki Makaurau, and the Editor-in-Chief for the Pacific Arts Legacy Project. Lana is the author of False Divides (BWB 2018), Bloody Woman (BWB 2021), was our Interim Director in 2021 and the Editor-in-Chief of The Pantograph Punch from 2017–2019. Lopesi is currently the Assistant Professor in the department of Indigenous Race and Ethnic Studies, at the University of Oregon.
Everything By: Lana Lopesi
Sāmoan woman writers and friends Lana Lopesi (Satapuala, Siumu) and Faith Wilson (Vaimoso, Siumu) chat about their new projects and the opportunities and challenges facing Pasifika writers today.
What do kids, an asthma inhaler, mugs, uku tangi and a keepsake box have in common?
A serial binge watcher hungry for Pacific stories, Lana Lopesi reflects on its spike on TV and why she’s here for it.
July & August highlights across visual arts, books and fashion, from the Pantograph Punch whānau of writers and editors.
Sleeping in the bed of Aotearoa literati: Lana Lopesi on the pressure of writers’ residencies and their legacies.
The best art on show in the dealer galleries of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in February 2021.
The PP crew give you 10 art moments that made 2020 suck a little bit less.
When the world is falling to pieces, sometimes you need to escape into something ridiculous. The Pantograph Punch team brings you our favourite bad TV.
Today we’re excited to launch the Pacific Arts Legacy Project – a digital-first history of Pacific arts in Aotearoa as told from the perspective of the Pacific artists who were there.
*can also be blessgo, lashgo, leshgo or any combination of too many s’s or too many o’s
August & September highlights across visual arts, books, music and fashion, from the Pantograph Punch team of writers and editors.
*These are just ideas, not me writing on behalf of my entire race, everywhere.
The best art on show in the dealer galleries of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in June 2020.
Despite our differences, the moon connects us all. Lana Lopesi reflects on this year’s Ramadan, and her relationship to food, allyship, other people and the lunar cycle.
The best art on show in the dealer galleries of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, and online, in May 2020.
We take a moment to thank the handmade objects that brought us joy while stuck at home.
The best art on show online this April from artists and galleries in Aotearoa.
Makanaka Tuwe and Anisha Sankar discuss hybrid identities in Aotearoa with Lana Lopesi.
What can an art writer do in a pandemic? A personal essay from Lana Lopesi on the place of the art during Covid-19.
Our freelance artists across theatre and visual arts are on the frontlines of the sector downturn. We hear from them.
The best art on show this month in the dealer galleries of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
Lana Lopesi in conversation with Kolokesa U Māhina-Tuai, Karl Chitham and Anna Miles about the possibilities of a fresh approach to the word and the idea of ‘craft’.
FAT, an exhibition at South Auckland gallery Vunilagi Vou, confronts fatphobia through art.
The legacy of nuclear testing and the prospect of climate catastrophe shape the present and future of the Pacific. Lana Lopesi reviews The Future of Our Kids at Te Uru Waitākere.
An exhibition about the Pacific should centre Pacific scholarship, right? Lana Lopesi asks this question of Te Tuhi’s Moana Don’t Cry.
Lana Lopesi explores the reawakened practices in Te Uru Waitākere’s ʻnames held in our mouths’.
Lana Lopesi investigates the creative pulse of an often-overlooked urban centre.
Following the success of Waru, Lana Lopesi talks strength, shorthand and home with two of the writer-directors behind the highly anticipated film Vai.
Tusiata Avia's barnstorming poetry comes to life at Q Theatre this month in Silo Theatre's Wild Dogs Under My Skirt. Lana Lopesi cracks open the play's radical, dramatic portrayal of Samoan womanhood.
Lana Lopesi talks to Sean Mallon about the responsibilities and privileges of writing Pacific history as Te Papa’s Senior Curator Pacific Cultures.
We’re not your interesting cousins you get to pull out when you need an edge.
In an environment where we are starving for criticism, the critics are just plain starving.
Two new publishers remind us of art's love of the printed form.
The abstracted violence of the white imagination in the work of Francis Upritchard.
There’s more poignant conversation in this housing crisis.
Who gets to be considered an artist?
Inequality isn't inevitable, it's engineered.
What happens when you give the community a camera?
Lana Lopesi on Govett-Brewster Art Gallery’s latest Len Lye offering.
Visual Arts Editor Lana Lopesi talks architecture, safe spaces and the ‘international’, with Misal Adnan Yıldız and Remco de Blaaij.
Indigenous curators Nigel Borell, Ioana Gordon-Smith and Ema Tavola tell Visual Arts Co-Editor Lana Lopesi what gives them hope and what frustrates them within New Zealand curatorial practice.
Our Visual Arts Co-Editor Lana Lopesi talks representation, immediacy and feminism with artists Leafa Wilson & Olga Krause, Hannah Brontë and Esther Ige in light of the exhibition Still, Like Air, I’ll Rise.
Lana Lopesi considers the contradictionary nature the anti-hero in Tusi Tamasese's latest film.
What do you expect public art to do? Lana Lopesi reflects on Michael Parekowhai's 'The Lighthouse', a new work on Auckland's waterfront that's been causing a stir.
Lana Lopesi outlines the politics of sexual fantasies, with some help from Idris Elba
Lana Lopesi (tauiwi) thinks through If we never met… A wānanga on curating indigenous art and Te Ahiahi///Te Awatea Curating Contemporary Māori Art, two related/unrelated days of talking indigeneity in Pōneke.
Lana Lopesi talks potentiality, post-truth and Trump in response to John Mutambu’s first curated show at Auckland’s Artspace.
'Half-blood' uses parallel games to explore the history of Aotearoa New Zealand, writes Lana Lopesi, and it's impossible not to get involved.
Lana Lopesi reflects on the recently opened Malcolm Smith Gallery and the challenges it faces as a community art space.
Lana Lopesi on the recently published 'Janet Lilo: Status Update', and the impossibility of talking about Lilo the artist without talking about Janet the person.
Lana Lopesi on being an artist and being a mother, and those who won't let the two meet.
Lana Lopesi on how the Pacific diaspora took to Twitter
Lana Lopesi goes to a symposium of the Pacific, but not necessarily for it.
Lana Lopesi on Tanu Gago’s latest video work.
