IDENTITY IN CONFLICT: A NZ BORN SAMOAN CREATIVE’S REFLECTIONS ON TRUMP, POLITICS AND INTERSECTING INFLUENCES.
Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, US President Donald J Trump, NZ Prime minister Christopher Luxon
Having poured a large cup of freshly brewed Samoan Koko (cocoa) earlier this morning, I hop online to quickly get an update on current events before getting into the days creative work.
Youtube highlights of Trumps second term inauguration celebrations in the US yesterday are predictably sparking interesting debates in the comment sections when they were enabled. His re-election has intensified debates around polarising issues like abortion, immigration, climate change and LGBTQ+ rights, further deepening the ideological divide in the country.
Parallel observations can be drawn over on X regarding Christopher Luxon’s National Party coalition which has dramatically shifted New Zealand’s political compass rightward. His focus on economic priorities has drawn some criticism, particularly for cutting climate budgets in this country where environmental stewardship is integral to national identity, and especially regarding the current division concerning Maoridom and the proposed Treaty Principles Bill.
Meanwhile, multiple Samoan media live stream panel discussions over on Facebook dissect the current political dramas unfolding back in the islands, where the FAST Party is in turmoil after its chairman, La'auli Leuatea Schmidt, expelled Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, the Deputy Prime Minister, and four ministers over alleged disloyalty and legal issues. This follows Fiamē’s earlier dismissal of La'auli and others, raising concerns about the nation’s political stability and governance.
I take a sip, leaning back in my chair, finding myself struck by the stark similarities and contrasts that exist within and between all three of these political landscapes, which also happen to be the three main spheres of social and artistic influence that have shaped me and my art the most, represented best by the complicated relationship I have long had with the three names I am known by:
“Anonymouz” - my creative alias artist name,
“Faiumu” - my Samoan chief title name bestowed from the village of Taga in Savai’i, Samoa, and
Matthew Salapu” - my legal New Zealand government name.
My mind wanders back to teenage years in the mid 1990’s, where Sunday mornings at our local strict Samoan Methodist church felt worlds apart from the previous Saturday night spent parked up preloading outside Mangere’s Apia Way nightclub, blasting West Coast US Hip Hop out the trunk subwoofers.
US Hip Hop music, visuals and print media publications heavily influenced myself and many of our generation back then, resonating deeply with us as impressionable teens.
“Expressing emotions and experiences we couldn’t articulate elsewhere, we were living rebellious double lives, negotiating the tension between the sacred and the secular, tradition and modernity.”
Returning to the present moment through another sip of koko watching Trump hilariously throw the pens he’d just signed historic executive orders with into the crowd, it dawned on me just how much my current views have evolved since then on so many topics and issues as a now middle aged adult citizen and creative professional.
INTERSECTIONS
It wasn’t until my mid 20s that I started to learn about civics and the paradigm between left and right wing ideologies. Equality of outcome vs equality of opportunity.
“Understanding these ideological battles and the interplay between these distinct yet interconnected political spheres has since become foundational to my artistic practice — not just as a product of these cultural intersections, but as a reflection of their complexities.”
I recall an incident early on in my career for an art gallery exhibition at Ōtara’s Fresh Gallery, where hours before an exhibition opening, I decided to re-edit a listening post playlist to censor an unreleased track where a local rapper had loosely used the term 'faggot', widely recognised as a homophobic slur.
While the term didn't offend me at the time due to it's widely normalised use as urban slang amongst my Hip Hop community, I recognized that the ‘boujee’ ‘arts’ community—an industry where I was increasingly working alongside many amazing LGBTQ+ colleagues—would likely find it problematic.
Was I an artistic free speech sell-out for censoring the art, knowing the true intention and context of the original creative expression? Or was my empathy for the ‘feelings’ of others justification?
It was a moment of personal reckoning and cultural sensitivity, acknowledging the need to navigate both the evolving world views of my artistic peers and my own context shaped by US media, NZ and Samoan societal and cultural frameworks.
Watching these current political events unfolding across all three nations once again reminds me today of why I gravitate toward art and creativity as a medium: its capacity to engage, critique and navigate the complexities of life, culture and politics.
CONFLICTED
A surprise to many of my fellow liberal arts colleagues, I’ve publicly supported many of Trump’s proposed common sense agendas, and am an admirer of many of the talented individuals in his orbit, like Elon Musk, RFK Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard.
Trumps policies feel like an overdue, rational counterbalance to what I—and obviously an overwhelming majority of Americans—personally viewed as extreme left-wing ideologies that had simply gone too far in certain areas.
I am however, once again again reminded of the complexity of perspectives not just between me and some of my peers, but increasingly, as with the gallery exhibition incident, within myself.
Image from Paradise Camp by Yuki Kihara
A recent highlight of my career, which deepened my appreciation for the diversity of identities and voices within the arts, was sonic branding and sound designing for Yuki Kihara’s breathtaking work, Paradise Camp, which represented Fa'afafine / transgender culture on a global stage at the 59th Venice Biennale, regarded as ‘The Olympics of the Art World’.
Yet, as I sit here today, taking another sip of koko, Trump has officially reversed much of America’s recent transgender policies.
This once again has me questioning:
What does Matthew, the New Zealand citizen, think about this?
What does Faiumu, the Samoan chief in my family, think?
And what does Anonymouz, the silence, the blank canvas, the free-thinking creative, really think?
Similarly, I was also commissioned to create an audio visual work in December 2023 about climate change titled “They taking Pictures of Us in the Water” that was debuted at the COP28 United Nations climate meeting in Dubai as part of Mana Moana/ SPREP Pacific advocacy work.
I accepted this commission remembering a family trip back to Samoa a few years back where my father pointed out the rapid coral erosion that had overtaken his childhood coastal family home and had since forced the village inland to higher grounds over time.
My father, Faiumu Tumua pointing out where his childhood family home used to be now overrun by coastal erosion in Taga, Savai’i, Samoa.
Trump’s unpredictability is his strength in his negotiations. Image credit courtesy of BBC media.
Trump has also just announced that the US would quit the Paris Climate Agreement—which on the surface, would seem directly in conflict with this work I’d created alongside many amazing collaborators…. or is it?
Search YouTube for “They Taking Pictures of Us in the Water”, a Hip-Hop audio visual remix adaptation of Audrey Pereira Brown’s amazing poem of the same name, and you’ll see recurring themes of floating cash washing ashore and flashes of Government lobbyists engaged in the financial and power struggles over the climate change agenda.
We already know that back in our beloved Moana Pacific islands that the environmental effects are real, but are these climate summits really about the climate, or are there other interests and motives at play?
“The art speaks where words fall short—layered, open to interpretation, and my way of grappling with these conflicts.”
Knowing that there are esteemed environmentalists on Trump’s team like RFK and Elon Musk (whose ironically done more for the planet than any other human in history) admittedly gives me as Matthew great piece of mind, and better yet, earns an official co-sign of ‘ou te lagolagoina le manatu’ , an official, on the record endorsement of cultural support for Trump and Elon from this side of the world as Faiumu, the Samoan chief from Taga.
Now sure, Trump isn’t perfect - nobody is. He is known to be ruthlessly transactional in order to achieve his and his nations objectives at all costs.
But zooming back out to see how insane 2024 was, isn’t that uncomfortable ruthlessness what’s currently required to deal to so much of the current world’s current undeniable deterioration? The definition of insanity is to do the same things and expect different results.
For the US system of politics, it was a binary choice of leadership between two options, and he and his team, in my observation, were the absolutely necessary counter correction that this world needed from the right.
These are just a couple of examples of my own personal and artistic conflicts with my US influences.
Who knows where to even start with the NZ and Samoa situations?
NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES
I confess that the anti-establishment ‘speak truth to power’ Hip-Hop-influenced Anonymouz part of me wants to channel my mentor, NZ Pacific Hip-Hop legend and pioneer Ermehn, to deliver a defiant "two middle fingers" response to US Democrats’ woke policies and Jacinda Ardern’s coercive vaccine mandates and lockdowns.
And don’t get it twisted either, Luxon and Seymore over on the right can get it too with some of their recent rhetoric.
As is often slang in Hip Hop, anybody can get it.
But Matthew, the NZ-raised version of myself, intervenes. He reminds me to tread carefully, knowing I must still navigate an industry of gatekeepers, funding bodies, and colleagues who lean in opposing directions.
Then, Faiumu, the Samoan chief within, grounds me. His words echo what’s often reminded within Samoa’s government chambers: Fa’aaloalo (respect) and Onosa’i (humility).
Even in disagreement or anger, measured and respectful expression is the way.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Taking my final sip from my Tautua mug—a design featuring a navy blue stripe referencing the historic Samoan MAU independence movement—I’m reminded of my Sāmoan ancestors’ sacrifices, who paid huge prices for voicing their unpopular opinions at the time.
NZ police officers physically removing the stripes off MAU supporters uniforms.
MAU leader Lauaki Namulau’ulu and other chiefs being exiled by the Germans in 1909 to Saipan.
MAU leader Tupua Tamasese was shot and killed by NZ police officers during a peaceful independence march in Apia on Black Saturday, 28th December 1929.
Zooming out, history repeatedly shows us that sacrifice is a painful but necessary pre-requisite for long term prosperity.
Samoa - MAU movement leaders Lauaki Namulaulu’s exile and Tamasese’s loss of life were some of the prices paid for the freedoms Samoans now inherit.
NZ - ANZAC commemorations each year reminds us as New Zealanders of the human price paid in warfare for our current freedoms.
USA - Trump, who faced an unprecedented weaponised legal system to imprison and bankrupt him in lockstep with mainstream media smear campaigns and multiple assassination attempts, has persevered against all odds to pull off the greatest comeback in American political history.
“Digital debates, social exclusion and cancel culture of the present VS physical, analogue exiles and deaths of the past.
Has humanity made progress?”
In no way do I purport to be an expert in political matters.
My interest in current events and political issues is that it serves as critical data input for my work that helps inform and shape my art. They fuel and guide the kicks, snares, wide angles and close ups.
More importantly, a finger on the political pulse enables me to leverage the art I do make to advocate as a responsible NZ citizen and Samoan matai chief for what I believe is in the best interests of my family, kids, village and nations.
(PS. Release the Epstein lists, clean out the World Health Organisation, overhaul Big Pharma and the food manufacturing industry, bring on the blockchain, and let Diddy know us Pac fans won’t let up til justice is served).
In the same way US media heavily influenced us as inexperienced teenagers back in the mid 90’s, I am simply on the opposite end now as a professional artist producing art to influence others through the lessons that I have since learned through my own journey of intersecting identities.
Balancing respect for tradition with an openness to evolution has been at the heart of my personal journey and creative process.
It’s a reflection of the complex, often contradictory landscapes we all must navigate—and it is through this tension that we all grow and learn from the most.
-Faiumu Matthew Salapu | ANONYMOUZ
The mug mentioned in this blog is from my foundational artist merch line, which supports independent story sovereignty and upcoming community advocacy content initiatives.