Yuki Kihara
Darwin in Paradise Camp

A visually stunning exhibition centring Indigenous, queer worlds by Japanese-Sāmoan artist Yuki Kihara.

The Whitworth is proud to present Yuki Kihara’s acclaimed installation Paradise Camp (2022), first presented at the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion in the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, and a new video work, Darwin Drag (2025).

Kihara delves into art histories and archives to unpick the effects of colonialism on the peoples and ecologies of the Pacific. Her visually compelling projects centre and empower the Fa’afafine and Fa’atama in Sāmoa, traditional yet marginalised third gender communities to which the artist belongs. In this exhibition, Kihara focuses on two celebrated Western figures – French modernist artist Paul Gauguin and evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – who each shaped Western understandings of the Pacific.

Paradise Camp responds to famous paintings of Tahiti and its people by French modernist artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903). Through archival research, Kihara links Gauguin’s paintings to colonial photographs taken in Sāmoa. Described by Kihara as an act of 'upcycling', she recreates Gauguin’s compositions in a series of 12 resplendent high definition photographs, shot on location in Upolu Island. Collaborating with Fa’afafine models and production crew, Kihara repurposes these cultural artefacts to speak to, and from, queer Indigenous worlds in a profound gesture of reclamation.

Kihara's new work Darwin Drag engages with research into how famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin shaped his findings to suggest that sexual diversity in animals was rare and unnatural, to conform with the conservative values of the Victorian period.

Blending scholarly research with theatrical staging, this exhibition combines art historical paintings, wallpapers, specimens, contemporary photographs and videos, props, and archives to reveal shared histories and nurture an alternate Indigenous queer world based on self-determination, where community and care are central.

Darwin in Paradise Camp is a touring exhibition from the Sainsbury Centre, University of East Anglia. The exhibition has been adapted for the Whitworth by Yuki Kihara and Poppy Bowers, Senior Curator (Exhibitions), the Whitworth, The University of Manchester.

Darwin Drag (2025) is supported by the Sainsbury Centre; the Whitworth, The University of Manchester; the British Council and AHRC Impact Acceleration Account administered by UEA.

The artist’s practice is supported by Creative New Zealand.

3 October 2025 – 1 March 2026

Exhibition Programme

Exhibition Preview – including live streamed Artist Talk

• Thursday 2 October – Free entry, booking required. The booking link will be posted here closer to the date.

Publication

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensively illustrated publication, Paradise Camp by Yuki Kihara, edited by Natalie King, published on the occasion of Yuki Kihara’s presentation at the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022.

• Available to purchase from the Whitworth Shop from 2 October 2025

Press release

Discover more about the artist and the exhibition at the Whitworth.

• Read the full Yuki Kihara press release
  
  

Image: Yuki Kihara, Fonofono o le Nuanua: Patches of the Rainbow (after Gauguin), 2020, C-print.
Copyright: Courtesy of Yuki Kihara and Milford Galleries, Aotearoa New Zealand