The Sainsbury Centre presents Darwin in Paradise Camp, a new exhibition by Yuki Kihara, an interdisciplinary artist of Sāmoan and Japanese descent. The exhibition features the UK premiere of Paradise Camp, a photographic series first presented at the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion in the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, alongside original works by Paul Gauguin and a newly commissioned video work, Darwin Drag.

Kihara’s practice is rooted in archival research and draws attention to the detrimental effects of climate change in the Pacific Islands. Responsible for less than 0.02% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Pacific Islanders’ proximity to the sea means they are amongst the most vulnerable to changing weather conditions. In particular, Kihara highlights the impacts of climate change on Sāmoa’s most vulnerable inhabitants: the third gender communities Fa’afatama and Fa’afafine, to which the artist also belongs.

Paradise Camp upcycles the works of French painter Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). Through archival research, Kihara believes Gauguin’s paintings made during his time in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands were inspired by colonial photographs taken in Sāmoa.

In Paradise Camp, Kihara recasts past narratives by using Fa’afafine and Fa’afatama models in colourful, hyperreal photographs reflecting Gauguin’s compositions. This exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre will present the work alongside original works by Gauguin for the very first time.

Paradise Camp is augmented by Kihara’s ground-breaking new video work, Darwin Drag (2025). Following new research by writers such as Ross Brooks and Joan Roughgarden, Kihara’s project reveals how famed evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) manipulated some of his findings to suggest non-heteronormative species and same-sex attraction in animals was rare and unnatural, in order to conform with the conservative values of the Victorian period.

Darwin’s evolutionary theories and queer aesthetics in the animal ‘queendom’ inspired Kihara to create Darwin Drag, which features Kihara herself prosthetically transformed as Charles Darwin, who confides in a renown Sāmoan drag queen, BUCKWEAT, that he has been unhappy keeping his secret in the closet about queer species for so long.

Darwin Drag also introduces the fish species with ‘Fa’afafine traits’ found in the ocean surrounding the Sāmoan archipelago, including clownfish and parrotfish. The work is presented alongside corresponding fish specimens, on loan from the Natural History Museum.

Incorporating wallpaper, Kihara’s own works, historical artworks and specimens plus archival material, the exhibition sheds new light on figures of the past and celebrates the radical perspective of this important artist.

The exhibition foregrounds how a closer relationship between humanity and the seas can save the communities most at risk of the human-caused impact on the seas, as well as the seas themselves.

Darwin in Paradise Camp: Yuki Kihara is one of three concurrent exhibitions in a programme exploring the question Can the Seas Survive Us?, which charts a course through the story of the world’s oceans and the precarious future they may be heading towards.