Filani Macassey

“As individuals we all have stories to tell. There are so many ways to engage within the telling.”

During June 2019 Filani Macassey travelled to Athens for the 25^th NZSA (NZ Studies Association) Conference. The artist presented a talk around her studio practice and her upcoming project in Cyprus. The conference gave speakers an opportunity to make connections between New Zealand the Pacific and Greece. From Athens Filani travelled to Cyprus to visit the historic village Φιλάνι, which she is named after. The village site Φιλάνι is situated in the settlement of Politico within the Nicosia district. The artists’  father Pat Macassey was a navigator in the LRDG during World War Two. Cyprus was a neutral zone where the Allied forces had a base and it is from here that the name Φιλάνι (Filani) was chosen for his daughter.

“I arrived in Cyprus with no prior connections and after having visited the village site once, it was time to begin my project”.

The artist planned various visits to the village and had the site filmed by a TV camera man from Nicosia.

 “It was about stepping through the threshold of the unknown and making connections. I found it compelling. Although I was named after a place with no personal cultural connection, I had to acknowledge and process my emotional reaction to the village site. The surrounding landscape reminded me of the countryside and our farm in Northland, New Zealand. I imagined my father there during the war years and wondered what he might have been thinking as he stood in the landscape—a brief respite from the fighting, and the vastness and heat of the Libyan desert.”

Macassey is a multi-media artist based in Northland New Zealand. Her work is inspired by the duality of having been born in Fiji and living most of her life from the age of six, during the seventies in New Zealand.

Filani graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts, in conjunction with papers at Auckland University. Her work has been exhibited in New Zealand, Fiji, Switzerland, Germany, and China.