Brian Fuata

Brian Fuata was born in 1978 in Te Whanganui‑a‑Tara/Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, and now lives and works on Antakirinja Matu Yankunytjatjara Country in Coober Pedy, South Australia. Fuata’s practice spans performance, film, installation, email and SMS text, social media, and print, unified by his distinctive approach to structured improvisation. He describes this method as the “mediation of performance,” drawing on the physical, social, and relational conditions of each site to shape both live and digital events.

Emerging within Australia’s experimental performance scene in the mid‑2000s, Fuata became known for his autofiction monologues and compact 20‑minute improvisations. Across his practice, he performs and continually re‑forms his identity as a queer, translocated Indigenous artist from Aotearoa, using improvisation to expose—and ultimately destabilise—the expectations, biases, and limitations embedded in visual art and theatre institutions.

Fuata’s work is deeply responsive and situational, attuned to the subtleties of context and encounter. His performances often transform audience dynamics, spatial conditions, and institutional frameworks into active material. For the Biennial, Fuata uses his opening weekend performances as the basis for Minor Gestures (Instruction & Entertainment), a two‑channel video projection accompanied by a two‑channel sound installation. This work extends his ongoing interest in gesture, repetition, and the porous boundary between instruction and improvisation.