Meke vula is a movement or dance directed by, in reverence of and performed beneath the Moon. To define meke vula as a practice of Fiji’s iTaukei Indigenous past is to flatten time across an axis of colonialism, polarising old and introduced spiritualities and moralities, extracting the body from its relationship to the Moon and all it governs.

In Aotearoa, the broad discourse and scholarship surrounding the maramataka expands the lunar calendar from an Indigenous knowledge system guiding planting, fishing, food cycles and sustainability, to include the Moon’s impact on water, energy and the body. Although sometimes debated (by men), the state of embodiment by the Moon’s cycles is a deeply felt reality for people with wombs, who bleed and learn throughout life to move through cycles of flux and flow, surrender and vitality.

Like the maramataka, the iTaukei Indigenous Fijian lunar calendar is based on planting and fishing seasons, but what happens when our feet are no longer in the soil? How can ecological wisdom be retained and transmitted across generations and geographies if relationality with the natural world is purely externalised? Embodiment is defined as a psychological state of bodily connection; re-learning connection is to remember that we are bodies of water, not living in the natural world but made of it.

Artist-curator Vasemaca Tavola is interested in the Moon, cosmic time, modes of decolonisation and Indigenous feminisms. Her practice centres Indigenous artists and ideas, multidimensionality of Indigenous experience, dreaming and transformation. For Ahikaea, Tavola offers a visual feast of creative ideas and embodied connection to inspire new conversations about creativity and the Moon.