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| Tupac: Resurrection 12mmx10mm Digital Photograph |
Recently on April 15 2012, sixteen years after he was famously murdered, American rapper Tupac Shakur appeared on stage at the Coachella music Festival in California. Resurrected in the form of realistic hologram he performed alongside living breatihing rapper Snoop Dogg. Tupac put on an eerie performance; the crowd were reported as becoming noticeably quiet, and achingly aware of the strangeness of this posthumous recreation of the famed icon.
My artistic practice is grounded in a Māori commemorative paradigm. I aim to address the reasons Māori reacted to, and then appropriated the display of ancestral portraiture as critical ceremonial practice. This work questions the cultural implications of this recent advance in technology and whether it is a possible future for our commemorative practices.
