LINDA VA’AELUA

Early years and Background

Linda Va’aelua is of Samoan (Magiagi, Saleaula, Lano and Samata), Palagi and Scottish heritage and grew up in Te Atatū South, West Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. She studied visual communication, graduating with a Bachelor of Design in 1999, and worked for more than 20 years in the design industry.

Va’aelua’s background as a creative director and art director, including being the first Pasifika art director at New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, informs the clarity and graphic structure of her artworks. Her close relationships with family, including the influence of her uncle, Samoan artist Iosua To’afa, ground her practice in intergenerational storytelling and Pacific arts histories.

Linda Va’aelua Artworks

Linda Va’aelua’s artworks combine painted and stitched hessian coffee sacks, heraldic motifs and malu-inspired patterning to map connections between Samoa, Scotland and Aotearoa within contemporary Pacific art. Working with banners, flags and collaged textiles, Linda Va’aelua creates layered visual languages that respond to migration, faith, labour and the first-generation New Zealand-born Samoan experience.

Heraldry, Vā and banner works

During a Tautai Fale-ship residency, Linda Va’aelua developed a body of banner works playing with heraldry as a connector to Scottish ancestry, using abstract mauga forms, sun motifs and star constellations derived from malu to think through navigation and the Vā between places and relationships. Digital placements of these banners in sites across Samoa, Scotland and Aotearoa further examined how contemporary Pacific art can hold connections between ancestral homelands and diasporic life.

‘Borne and Bred’ and first-generation experience

The exhibition Borne and Bred at Tautai Pacific Arts Trust focuses on Linda Va’aelua’s experience as a first-generation New Zealand-born Samoan raised in Tāmaki Makaurau, using repurposed materials and Samoan motifs to question identity, value and cultural legacy. The artworks pay tribute to the labour of Pasifika parents and grandparents and trace the social and spiritual landscapes that shape Pacific communities in Aotearoa.

Publishing and visual storytelling

Alongside studio practice, Linda Va’aelua has worked on book and publishing projects that extend her visual storytelling, including design and illustration for NUKU: Stories of 100 Indigenous Women and projects honouring Iosua To’afa such as Tusiata o le Tala o le Vavau: Artists of the Forever Stories and A Niu Dawn. These works situate her art within broader Indigenous and Pacific narratives across contemporary culture and literature.

Select Awards and Accolades

• Inaugural Creative New Zealand–McCahon House Pacific Visual Arts Artist in Residence, Parehuia, Titirangi, 2026
• Te Papa Tongarewa acquisition of artworks by Linda Va’aelua, Wellington
• Tautai Fale-ship Residency, Tautai Pacific Arts Trust, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
• Recognition as a leading Tagata Moana contemporary artist within Aotearoa Pacific arts networks

Linda Va’aelua Exhibitions

Linda Va’aelua has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions with a focus on Pacific contemporary art, identity and heraldry in Aotearoa New Zealand. Below is a selection.

Select solo exhibitions

• Borne and Bred, Tautai Pacific Arts Trust, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 2025
• Between the Betweenness, Depot Artspace, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 2022
• HALF (virtual exhibition), Aotearoa, 2021

Select group / two-person exhibitions

• Kindred (with Alison Leauanae), Bergman Gallery / related venues, Aotearoa, 2023
• South–Versed 23, Depot Artspace, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 2023
• Group exhibitions with Pacific-focused galleries and institutions in Aotearoa

More Reading

Linda Va’aelua’s practice is profiled across Pacific arts platforms and arts media, including Tautai Pacific Arts Trust, Art News Aotearoa, and The Coconet TV.

Linda Va’aelua FAQs

Ocula | 2026