La Familiar - Shiloh Sagapolu @ss.murch

16th October - 20th November 2026

Opening: Friday 16th October, 6pm
Level 1, 285 Cashel St

La Familiar is an exhibition about the visceral culture of sound in Aotearoa and the social experiences that gather around it. The exhibition pays homage to siren culture, AFTLOS (All For The Love Of Sounds), bass culture, parades, (siren) battles, and the unofficial social spaces that form around loud sound. These are cultures built through participation, where sound becomes a way of communicating. Sound moves through car parks, city streets, night markets, industrial areas and parades. It comes from cars, sirens, modified systems and the people who gather around them. What might look and sound obnoxious from the outside can be deeply familiar to those participating: a place to meet, compete, dance, drink, laugh, show off, make memories and simply have fun.

La Familiar is a shrine to an upbringing. These events, and the competitiveness over volume, are spaces our people curate for fun. They break several laws and almost always draw a heavy police presence, at times understandably so. But the reasoning is simple: they reflect our family events. We bring our kids along to watch and join in, there's always a few horsing it, and we dance and dance until it ends up as edits of people in horse masks. It's a chance to show off your sound system and earn bragging rights for the best parade or loudest car.

Increasingly, this life lives online too. The event becomes the one you don't want to miss, and if you do, you're at home watching the lives. Online coverage has connected people all over Aotearoa through sound. La Familiar isn't asking you to think about the inconvenience to your ears, or the few seconds you can't hear yourself think while your whole house shakes. It's asking you to think about the moving vehicle of sound itself, and its role in shaping these events. La Familiar is familiar to those who take part in its antics, but even if you don't, you're still considered, even if only as an annoyed citizen.

Artist Bio

Shiloh Sagapolu is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in West Auckland, now based in Ōtautahi. Drawing from everyday life, current trends and the humour of growing up, her work explores Pacific life and experiences in Aotearoa today.

Her practice spans sewing, illustration and textiles. Her first solo exhibition, La Sireneta, reimagined a dream bedroom and TV set inspired by her adolescence and transition into her 20s. The installation brought together sewn objects, illustrations and textiles, including 'vape bags,' character archetypes and a 'relate' card deck, presented as props within the fictionalised space and made available for audiences to purchase.

Playful and accessible, Shiloh's work invites audiences into a world that feels both personal and familiar.

Follow Shiloh on socials!