Dan Taulapapa McMullin
Dan Taulapapa McMullin is an artist and poet from Sāmoa i Sasa'e (American Sāmoa). Their artist book The Healer's Wound: A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia (2022, 2nd ed. 2024) was published by Pu'uhonua Society and Tropic Editions for the Hawai'i Triennial. Their poetry collection Coconut Milk (2013) was selected as an American Library Association Rainbow List Top Ten Book of the Year. They are co-editor of Samoan Queer Lives (Little Island Press, 2018).
Their visual and film works have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum, MassMOCA, Bishop Museum, Musée du quai Branly, and Auckland Art Gallery. Films include Sinalela (2002 Best Short, Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival) and 100 Tikis (Official Selection, FIFO Tahiti; Présence Autochtone, Montreal).
Taulapapa lives on Muh-he-con-neok lands (Hudson, NY) with their husband, and their practice centers Indigenous Pacific Islander ways of knowing, land/ocean stewardship, and queer survivance.
Featured Pieces in otec
'O le Vao, 'O le Fanua
Artist: Dan Taulapapa McMullin
Title: 'O le Vao, 'O le Fanua
Dimensions: 6' x 11' ft.
Media: Tapestry of Prints on Cloth - Digital Print on Cotton, Organza
Year: 2025
Artist Statement: 'O le Vao are the wild rainforests and reefs of the Samoa archipelago in the South Pacific, and 'O le Fanua are the indigenous cultivated lands of Samoa. This work is based on the traditional practice of Siapo or printing and painting of logologo (pronounced LOH-ngoh-LOH-ngoh) patterns on barkcloth, the cloth made from the pounded inner bark of the hibiscus. Logologo is a visual language where abstract patterns represent the environment of the South Pacific, including waves, reefs, reef channels, mountains, bays, forests, fields, canals, stars, heavens, clouds, fish, animals, and birds. Here these traditional patterns are based on my paintings, and my grandmother Sisipeni and great grandmother Fa'asapa's siapo, and on other traditional siapo. These abstractions are recreated onto cloth through photoshop painting and artificial intelligence text to image processes, and printed onto opaque and semi transparent cloth, and sewn and tied into a tapestry.
Artist Bio: The Samoan archipelago is currently divided between the eastern islands of the US Territory of American Samoa where the artist grew up, and the western islands of the independent nation of Samoa where the artist has lived much of their life as a practicing poet and painter and teacher. Dan Taulapapa McMullin grew up in the villages of Malaeloa and Leone, Tutuila Island, American Samoa, where they were taught the art of siapo (tapa barkcloth printing and painting) by their grandmother Sisipeni Iosefa and great grandmother Fa'asapa Kaio Peniata. Taulapapa identifies as non-binary Fa'afafine (the way of a wife/woman) which is part of the queer culture of Samoa. Their genealogy also connects to the Manu'a Islands of eastern Samoa, and 'Upolu and Savai'i Islands in independent Samoa, and O'ahu in Hawai'i. They are a poet and painter living in upstate New York with their husband.