Taloi Havini (b, 1981, Arawa, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea; lives and works in Brisbane, Australia) is an interdisciplinary artist working across media from sculpture, photography, moving image, installation, and sound. A descendant from the Nakas clan of the Hakö (Haku) people of northeastern Buka, her research practice is shaped by her matrilineal ties to her land in Bougainville and studies surrounding Indigenous Knowledge Systems and museum collections.

Havini creates immersive and site-specific experiences, often reflecting on ideas of transmission, mapping and representation. She continues to work collaboratively on cultural heritage projects with communities in Bougainville.

Havini’s artwork is held in public and private collections including TBA21–Academy, Sharjah Art Foundation, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), National Gallery of Victoria and KADIST, San Francisco, CA, USA. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions exhibiting with Artspace, Sydney; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Sharjah Biennial 13, UAE; 3rd Aichi Triennial, Nagoya; 8th & 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane; TBA21’s Ocean Space, Venezia; Barbican Centre, London; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand; the Honolulu Biennial, Hawaii; and Artes Mundi 10, Wales.

Banner image courtesy of Artspace. Portrait of the artist by Zan Wimberley, courtesy of Artspace, Sydney.

The Habitat series are multi-channel video installations exploring intersections of history, the environment and nation-building within the matrilineal social structures of her birthplace, the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. Havini’s Habitat series is an ongoing investigation exploring the legacy of resource extraction and Australia’s fraught relationship in the Pacific.

Habitat: Konawiru, 2016 is a single-channel 16:9, HD, colour, sound, 3:43

Habitat, 2017 is a three-channel, 16:9, HD, colour, 5.1 surround sound, 10:40 mins digital video installation and was originally commissioned for The National by the Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), adapted for her Pavillon Neuflize OBC residency solo exhibition, Palais de Tokyo (Paris) in 2017.

Habitat, 2018 - 2019 HD, colour, black & white, 5.1 surround sound, 10:33 mins
Presented as part of the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial, Women’s Wealth project and exhibition, supported by The Australia Council for the Arts. Archival footage was sourced from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), including footage from personal family archives, Moses Havini and Marilyn Taleo Hatukul Havini.