Yuki KiharaDarwin in Paradise Camp

A visually stunning exhibition centring Indigenous, queer worlds by Japanese-Sāmoan artist Yuki Kihara.

The Whitworth is proud to present Yuki Kihara’s acclaimed installation Paradise Camp (2022), first presented at the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion in the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, and a new video work, Darwin Drag (2025).

Yuki Kihara is joined by curator and writer Tamsin Hong and science historian Ross Brooks to reflect on her recent video work Darwin Drag (2025). Together they explore the intersection between contemporary art, Indigenous histories and queer perspectives on science.

Introduced by Poppy Bowers, Senior Curator (Exhibitions) at the Whitworth.

About the speakers

Yuki Kihara

Yuki Kihara is a conceptual artist working and living in Sāmoa. She uses photography, performance, moving image, sculpture and archival research to confront the ways in which Western art history as a domineering force has presented the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific – particularly third gender communities in Sāmoa, which have historically been marginalized in the advent of colonialism. Kihara gained recognition following a solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manahatta New York in 2008, and in 2022, she represented the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale to critical acclaim. Kihara’s exhibition Darwin in Paradise Camp is currently on display at the Whitworth until 1 March 2026.

Tamsin Hong

Tamsin Hong (she/her) is a contemporary international art curator based in London. Hong’s research interests include women’s knowledge systems, embodied practices, and re-indigenising approaches. Born on unceded Ngunnawal Country on the land now known as Australia, Hong is Exhibitions Curator at Serpentine, London. Her recent projects Arpita Singh: Remembering (2025), Yinka Shonibare CBE: Suspended States (2024) and Georg Baselitz: Sculptures 2011-2015(2023). As Assistant Curator at Tate Modern, Hong worked on performance, African, and Australian acquisitions and exhibitions.

Ross Brooks

Dr Ross Brooks (he/him) is an Associate Lecturer in History at Oxford Brookes University. He has been integral in developing queer perspectives in the history of science and his reappraisal of the sexological ideas of Charles Darwin has been especially influential. He appears in the pioneering nature documentary Queer Planet and his first book, Darwin and the Queer Origins of Life, will be published by Yale University Press next year.

Kihara delves into art histories and archives to unpick the effects of colonialism on the peoples and ecologies of the Pacific. Her visually compelling projects centre and empower the Fa’afafine and Fa’atama in Sāmoa, traditional yet marginalised third gender communities to which the artist belongs. In this exhibition, Kihara focuses on two celebrated Western figures – French modernist artist Paul Gauguin and evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – who each shaped Western understandings of the Pacific.

Paradise Camp responds to famous paintings of Tahiti and its people by French modernist artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). Through archival research, Kihara links Gauguin’s paintings to colonial photographs taken in Sāmoa. Described by Kihara as an act of ‘upcycling’, she recreates Gauguin’s compositions in a series of 12 resplendent high definition photographs, shot on location in Upolu Island. Collaborating with Fa’afafine models and production crew, Kihara repurposes these cultural artefacts to speak to, and from, queer Indigenous worlds in a profound gesture of reclamation.

Kihara’s new work Darwin Drag engages with research into how famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin shaped his findings to suggest that sexual diversity in animals was rare and unnatural, to conform with the conservative values of the Victorian period.

Blending scholarly research with theatrical staging, this exhibition combines art historical paintings, wallpapers, specimens, photographs, videos and archives to reveal shared histories. It nurtures an Indigenous queer world based on self-determination, where community and care are central.

Darwin in Paradise Camp is a touring exhibition from the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia. The exhibition has been adapted for the Whitworth by Yuki Kihara and Poppy Bowers, Senior Curator (Exhibitions), with support from Vaishna Surjid, Curatorial Assistant (Exhibitions), and Dom Bilton, Public Programme Producer. With thanks to Anita Gigi, Exhibitions Designer and Gui Taccetti, Artist Production Manager.

Darwin Drag (2025) is supported by the Sainsbury Centre; the Whitworth, The University of Manchester; the British Council and AHRC Impact Acceleration Account administered by UEA.

The artist’s practice is supported by Creative New Zealand.