Jasmine Togo-Brisby delves into cultural memories and shared histories of plantation colonisation across Moana Pacific, through her painting, sculpture and photographic practice.

A fourth-generation Australian South Sea Islander with ancestral lineage to the Vanuatu islands of Ambae and Santo, Togo-Brisby’s research examines the brutal history of Pacific slave-trading, euphemised as ‘black-birding’, and its contemporary legacy and impact upon those who trace their roots to New Zealand and Australia through the slave-diaspora. Togo-Brisby’s work mines archives, uncovering evidence embedded within contemporary material culture, and creates portraiture images of her family across three generations—her mother, daughter and herself—against archival images or posed with colonial objects, forcing a consideration of who is and isn't visible within historical narratives.

Jasmine Togo-Brisby (born 1982, Australia) has a Master of Fine Arts from Massey University, Wellington and Bachelor of Fine Arts from Griffith University, Brisbane. Togo-Brisby’s work is held in several public collections including Auckland Art Gallery. She exhibits regularly in New Zealand and Australia, showing at City Gallery Wellington, 2018 and her series If these walls could talk, they'd tell you my name at the Courtenay Place Park Light Boxes, 2019-20. Togo-Brisby was the recipient of the Otago Polytechnic 2019 Dunedin School of Art – Tautai Artist residency. Togo-Brisby lives and works in Wellington.