Tui Emma Gillies & Sulieti Fieme’a Burrows are New Zealand based Tongan artists specialising in tapa art. Their work mixes can be challenging, confronting and controversial, but always with respect to the roots of the medium and the ancestors who practised it before them. 

They have received grants from Creative New Zealand towards collaborative art projects and were the recipients of the Creative New Zealand Heritage Art Award in 2018. 

They have exhibited and presented their work across the globe and sold works to private buyers, including The Royal Academy of Art in London (during Oceania) The National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, The University of Hawaii Hilo and Auckland Museum. Sulieti was recently made an MNZM in the New Zealand New Year’s honours.

We now cross over to Kawakawa in Northland where our mother and daughter duo are on the line now