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Grace & Space Mirror Column (2024),
Tamaiti Tautua - Koko (2019),
and Tamaiti Tautua - Kerisiano (2019),
triple detail view.

Grace & Space Mirror Column (2024),
Tamaiti Tautua - Koko (2019),
Tamaiti Tautua - Kerisiano (2019),
and JP / Jason Pereira

Tā Vā Woven, 2025
Repurposed Synthetic Tarp Fabric, Acrylic Paint, Epson Photo Paper mounted on 3X Repurposed Wood Panel
45” x 76”

Selected pieces from the live painting Island Block Jam Sessions at PIEAM. Shown together, they express the shared energy of movement through time and space between Samoan and Chamorro artistry.

JP / Jason Pereira
Tā Vā: a prism of time through space

May 17 - June 14

Gallery hours Friday & Saturday from 11 - 4pm

Closing event June 14

Pilele Projects is honored to present this new exhibition of work by JP / Jason Pereira. The show begins in response to a portrait series titled Future Ancestors by art collective Art25: Art in the 25th century. Art25 gifted Pilele Projects and our community 13 large scale offprints from the original exhibition of the series, shown at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in the winter of 2020-2021, inviting us to translate and transform the materials and spirit of the original series into new work. JP selected one of the portraits to weave into his own form of self-portrait as Future Ancestor. The resulting work is presented here as Tā Vā Woven (2025), which physically weaves together one of the photographs from Future Ancestors with a painting of the Milky Way galaxy that JP made on a repurposed and repaired polyethylene tarp.

The opening day of the exhibition also became a community weaving workshop. In the photographs below, you can see the process of preparing the source images and weaving them togther.

The spirit of repurposing and reusing materials is central to the piece and carries forward the intentions of Art25’s gift. The panel that it is mounted on is also twice repurposed; first it served to protect the windows at PIEAM during the 2020 George Floyd protests, later it became a graffiti panel which JP painted in response to the vandalism of one of the Yapese money stones in PIEAM’s garden. The weaving was done by hand and in community at the opening of the show, with the vertical strips of the photograph left as an unfinished fringe at the base of the panel. This is in keeping with traditional Samoan forms of mat weaving, where the fringe represents the future, the work that remains to be done, and the connections that remain to be made.

Across the gallery, facing back at Tā Vā Woven, are three more portraits drawn from earlier moments in JP’s trajectory as an artist. The central piece, Grace & Space Mirror Column (2024), is a septagonal column of mirrors, which matches JP’s physical height. Each mirror is painted with symbols and anecdotes from different phases of the his life, with the exception of the mirror facing across the gallery which remains clear. To each side of Grace & Space Mirror Column, mounted on a thin shelf on the back wall are two portraits done in charcoal and acrylic on panel, titled Tamaiti Tautua - Koko and Tamaiti Tautua - Kerisiano, both from 2019. The immaculate precision of the portraits combined with the tight graphic orange and blue two-tone of the words “Tamaiti Tautua” produce an extraordinary dimensionalizing effect. The children in the portraits smile deeply in their traditional regalia, reminding us of the cycles that link all past, present, and future. Tamaiti Tautua means “the children who serve” or are in service to the community.

Bridging the works on each side of the gallery, JP’s The Long Hard Way (2024), hangs from the ceiling. Originally commissioned for a City of Long Beach Health & Human Services project, the painting represents the struggles of Pacific Islander communities as they strive toward a better future. Each plus sign marks another step forward in the long hard way. It is a story of resilience and commitment.