Silverlens is thrilled to announce that Taloi Havini’s new commission Nakas: marks of matriliny (2025) is part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s galleries dedicated to the arts of Oceania in the newly reimagined Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, which opens to the public 31 May 2025 in New York.

Knowledge-production, transmission, inheritance, mapping, and representation are central themes in Havini’s work where she examines these in relation to land architecture, and place. 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. In 2024, Havini won the Artes Mundi prize, the largest art prize in the UK.

Silverlens will present two projects by Havini at Art Basel in Basel this June, including a duo presentation with Patricia Perez Eustaquio in the Premiere sector and a new edition of her acclaimed Beroana (shell money) in the Unlimited sector for major installations.

For press inquiries, email nypress@silverlensgalleries.com

Origins: An Ocean of Islands

The astounding mobility of Oceanic peoples over millennia was a catalyst for the flourishing of a kaleidoscopic range of cultures and languages across some ten thousand islands. In this vast cosmopolitan network, spanning one third of the globe, islands are departure points as well as destinations. Oral histories tell of the jagged ends of islands breaking off and swimming like canoes—or sharks—through the ocean to anchor themselves farther east, creating new homes for the next generation of Islanders. These island communities were never static settlements but heavily trafficked staging posts in an ancient trajectory of ocean passage that reached across space and time. The Ocean itself is a highway, one that links—rather than separates—Islanders who are bound by common ancestry. These connections invigorate Oceanic art, with materials and new ideas born of the dynamic webs of exchange and encounter that are a hallmark of the region.

Like the canoes that carried people on their ocean voyages, the arts of Oceania are vessels that facilitate more metaphysical passages. They effect transitions between realms that can bridge the past with the present. Even the simplest devices are conceptually vast: fishhooks, charts made of sticks, or lengths of knotted fiber cord are practical art forms that have the capacity to unlock an extraordinary archive of cultural knowledge. These galleries explore the visible, tangible expression of these expansive ideas alongside the unique spatial, and relational, dynamics of Oceania. What you see here—horizon lines, the arching dome of the sky, islands tethered in a vast ocean—are the coordinates that guide time and shape life in this unique and compelling landscape.

Learn more here.

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 won the prestigious Artes Mundi Prize on its tenth edition. 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. Currently, Havini has a work on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York as part of the reopening of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.