Archive Note
Su'a Sulu'ape Alaiva'a Petelo is the brother of Su'a Sulu'ape Paulo II and, since Paulo II's death in Auckland on 25 November 1999, the principal senior authority of the Sulu'ape line within the Sa Su'a hereditary tufuga ta tatau aiga. His 1985 appearance at the Rome tattoo convention, on the joint invitation of Don Ed Hardy and Henk Schiffmacher, was the first appearance of a Samoan tufuga on the international convention circuit and the institutional bridge between Samoan tatau and Western tattoo culture. (Some accounts misplace this 1985 convention in Reno; the convergent record places it in Rome, Italy.) Petelo was a featured artist at the Japanese American National Museum exhibition Tatau: Marks of Polynesia, curated by Takahiro Kitamura in Los Angeles in 2014, alongside Keone Nunes and Si'i Liufau. His stewardship covers the canonical pe'a (male) and malu (female) hand-tap practice using the 'au comb and sausau striker. The standard scholarly treatment of the tradition is Sean Mallon and Sebastien Galliot, Tatau: A History of Samoan Tattooing (Te Papa Press, 2018).