17. Miriama Bono - Curator of the Museum of Tahiti

Celebrating Pacific Island Arts and Creativity through storytelling in the 21st century.

Since the beginning of Covid-19 lockdown, many Pacific Islanders found new ways to leverage the power of storytelling through creating podcasts. The inspiration for this is to pass on Pacific Island traditional knowledge and cultural values that inspires the younger generations.

In this episode, we spoke to Miriama Bono, an architect and painter from French Polynesia, who is Director of the Musée de Tahiti et des Îles. Bono has been instrumental in commissioning the renovation of the museum, as well as securing a number of international loans that return significant objects of Polynesian culture to the museum. One of her goals as the director of Musée de Tahiti et des Îles and as an artist, she was determined to bring to the forefront stories of cultural artists of Tahiti to the outside world. To show the world another side of Tahiti that the world doesn’t know.  Along with her husband, Benjamin Brillouet they both created two podcasts - one dedicated to art and creativity in Tahiti called Tahiti On Air that showcase stories of Polynesian Artists and creative individuals from different creative cultural avenues. The podcast shares inspiring journeys for others to witness the Polyniesan diversity and richness of artists from the Islands. The second podcast is called Parau Tama, a podcast dedicated to Polynesian tales and legends.

The podcast is dedicated to creation in Tahiti, but not only Initially focused on the creative process of Polynesian artists, the podcast's fields of interest now extend from artistic creation Talk a Podcast co-hosted by Miriama Bono and Benjamin Brillouet.