You’ll Never Know

The interplay between image and language feature throughout the work of artist Lily Aitui Laita. Te reo Māori, Gagana Sāmoa and English words abound, some recurring across different works such as ‘whakarite-you’ll never know’. Combined, ‘you’ll never know’ and ‘whakarite’, meaning arrange, likely allude to the purposefully elusive and encoded way in which Laita worked.

During the 1990s in Pacific art history, many artists employed recognisably Pacific motifs and bright colours in expressive works that visualized a distinctly Pacific identity. However, Laita resisted easy categorisation of her work and identity in her expressive paintings. Her defiance of this position is evident sharing, “Being a woman, being part Māori, being Sāmoan, it’s like wow! Three for the price of one!”2

In the work, You’ll Never Know, a close inspection is fundamental. The tactile nature of Laita’s painting style can be seen in the layered and vigorous movement of yellow, red and white strokes created by dipping her hands in paint and gesturing them across the canvas. Figures recurr across Laita’s practice however unique to early works, such as this, is their more abstracted appearance. The artist works loosely over the surface using black oil stick, lines intersect, forming the outline of a figure posed kneeling head cradled in arms – as if retreating into oneself or closing oneself off from our gaze. Her ambiguous approach to making embodied in the works’ title also written on in the centre of the work ‘you’ll never know’.

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