About 

BIO

Pelenakeke Brown (Gataivai, Siutu-Salailua) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores the intersections between disability theory and Sāmoan cultural concepts. Her practice spans visual art, text, performance, and curatorial practice. She is from Aotearoa (New Zealand) and is an Sāmoan/Pakehā, crip artist.

She has worked internationally presenting performances, exhibitions, published writing and residencies in New York, California, Berlin, Hamburg, London and Aotearoa.

She has worked with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gibney Dance Center, The New York Library for the Performing Arts, MASS MoCA and other institutions, globally. Selected residencies include Eyebeam, The Laundromat Project, BRIC and Denniston Hill. Her work has been written about in Art in America, The New York Times, Art Agenda and The Art Paper. Selected awards include being recognised in 2024 with a Wynn Newhouse Award (US).

She is informed by the Samoan concept of the vā- relationships across time and space, crip time and is continually trying to find sites to investigate that hold both of these dual theories. Pelenakeke’s work straddles many mediums, is it a poem, a visual work or a choreographic score- she asks, why not all three?