Born on July 8, 1998 on the island of Raiatea, French Polynesia, Orama Nigou spent a childhood steeped in Ma'ohi culture, traditional dance and materials. After a stint at the Centre des Métiers d'Arts de la Polynésie française from 2015 to 2018, she continued her studies in France, graduating in 2021 with a DnMade diploma in textile materials from the Pôle design Nouvelle-Aquitaine. A textile designer, artist-researcher and performer, she specializes in working with feathers, a hybrid, sacred and symbolic material, which she transforms into objects, installations and performances blending craft, contemporary art and Polynesian heritage.

Parallel to her artistic practice, Orama Nigou is developing a profound reflection on the memory of materials and the transmission of ancestral know-how. Her work explores the feather as a link between beings, territories and spirits, in an approach that is both spiritual and ecological. Invited to the Cité internationale des arts de Paris in 2023, she has exhibited between Polynesia, France and New Zealand. Through her works and performances, she questions the boundaries between body and textile, gesture and ritual, tradition and contemporary creation. Her poetic, embodied work brings together the intimate and the collective, reinventing materials as living memories of the world.

A poetic use of feathers

In her creations, Orama Nigou focuses on textile objects from Polynesian heritage, where feathers, her material of choice, occupy a central place. Associated with the divine in Ma'ohi mythology, the feather links men to the gods: birds are perceived as celestial messengers, bearers of the sacred. More than its spiritual aspect, it questions the way a community chooses a material to crystallize an essential part of its identity. In her work, the pen becomes the vector of a metaphysical material: a language that links culture, memory and transformation.

Experimenting seems essential to me: everyone evolves at their own pace, on a path that leads somewhere, even if the result doesn't look exactly like what you had originally planned.

The artist's practice is also rooted in a philosophical reflection nourished by the concept of natira, the link, in Tahitian, which she interprets as a weft linking all things, material or immaterial. This approach has led her to develop a profoundly transdisciplinary approach, combining arts and crafts, plastic arts, textile design and performance. Her creations take the form of textile objects and feather fabrics, sometimes wired to explore movement and sculpture. She also designs site-specific installations, where her works, often concealed in nature, emerge like relics or talismans, inviting the viewer to sensitive discovery.

A residency at Noho

In September and October 2025, Orama Nigou inaugurated the Noho residency in Wellington, New Zealand. This new location joined Villa Antipode, a network of residences in New Zealand, created on the initiative of the French Embassy in the country. During these two months, the artist was able to develop an original project, which continues his research around the feather technique, inspired by the potential remains of the maro'ura.

During the residency, Orama Nigou explored the performance of the sewing gesture in experiments where the body becomes the sewn support, amplifying the intimacy between the creator and her work, but also blurring the boundaries between maker and made. Live performances, performative remnants, videos, photographs and textile installations have fueled this research.