Léuli Eshrāghi is a polyglot and has both feet firmly planted in the artistic community. Today she is responsible for preserving Aboriginal art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), a first in Quebec and the institution that is creating a real revolution.
Behind the mustache, a benevolent and discreet smile betrays a gentle shyness. Although Léuli Eshrāghi comes from far away, his heart has been in Quebec for several years.
At the request of Léuli Eshrāghi, Radio-Canada has retained the name iel to identify this person in this report.
It originally comes from the Samoa Islands, an archipelago in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and is of diverse origin. He is an official member of the Samoan Seumanutafa and Tautua clans.
“I grew up in Australia and around the age of 13 I realized that there were other indigenous peoples elsewhere by meeting people from Oceania, like the people of Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea or the Kanaks of New Caledonia,” says Eshraghi in an interview.
His arrival in Montreal coincides with that deep youthful curiosity to delve headlong into other cultures and nations despite the distances.
The diversity of cultures in Montreal, rooted in Quebec society, makes it a unique city in North America.
For more than a month, Eshrāghi – who speaks French, English, Samoan, Spanish and the Creole languages of Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea – has also been responsible for acquiring new Indigenous works for the MMFA’s permanent collection.
I came to the metropolis in 2019 to do my doctorate there, but Canada is no stranger to me. I traveled to the west of the country several times a year and got to know the First Nations, their great diversity and their cultures.
I’m very happy because I’ve wanted to work in a French-speaking environment for a long time.
At 37, Eshrāghi knows that being local means coming from an area often steeped in colonial history. Beyond intergenerational trauma, her aim at the MMFA remains to portray the vitality and complexity of Aboriginal communities today.
The indigenous people of Oceania have a lot in common with the indigenous people of Canada. We may not have known about the boarding school system in Samoa, but the influence of the missionaries is still fresh in people’s minds.

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Léuli Eshrāghi is from the Samoa Islands.
Photo: Radio Canada / Ismaël Houdassine
Imagination and geography also represent a common paradigm among Aboriginal people, says Eshrāghi, who sees waterways as truly vital highways for communities.
The same is true of our relationship with the sea at home in Samoa. A road of relationships, of regular exchange. With the arrival of European empires in the Pacific, trade was reduced until it disappeared altogether.
Before he settles down in the city, however, the pandemic will have locked him out in Australia for some time. But the closure of the borders did not stop the all-rounder from continuing to work.
While stuck there, I initiated several projects, such as the realization of a work for the Sydney Biennale. I also organized an exhibition at the MacKenzie Museum of Art in Regina remotely and as a curator.
Paris with the Musée du Quai Branly or the Palais de Tokyo, Brisbane, Auckland etc., the artistic initiatives add up until the final return to Montreal.
I see my role as a cross-border work with a territorial anchor, without a Eurocentric vision.
Léuli Eshrāghi has extensive expertise in the history of indigenous arts, contemporary practices and institutional development in Oceania (the Great Ocean) and North America and has been working at the MMFA since June 5th.
As I’m not from Quebec, I hope to be able to highlight the links that connect artists from here with artists from other French-speaking countries, Tahiti, the Maghreb or French Guiana.
The aesthetic expression of the English-speaking aborigines is already widespread in the international art world, both in Canada and in the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world, recalls Eshrāghi, who wants to put contemporary and historical Francophone creation on the agenda.
I am thinking, for example, of the three Louisiana natives who could have their place here in the museum.