‘Doubleness of Meaning’: Pasifika Clothing, Camp and Couture

Oscar Wilde once famously said that ‘it is not life that art imitates, but the viewer’ – a turn of phrase that succinctly sums up many of the ways in which Pacific peoples have been imagined by Western audiences. Today, issues of viewing – who is telling the story and who is the audience – are at the forefront of arguments about Pacific image-making.