Chiara Garrett-Saladrau

Mood Ring is a feature film by performance artist Sereima Adimate/Stelly G, Kiki Oner and Garden Reflexxx. The group examines female friendships, the idea of love letters, the challenge of unpacking heritage and the meaning of going home. In the ineffable shadow of taboo, Mood Ring is a radical sign of deliverance. In 2021 the group started a writer's room brainstorming ideas of 'First Times'. It led them to Mood Ring, a community funded project based in/on Fiji. The footage features moments from the location reconnaissance Sereima went on in early 2022. In a tangled visual poem that blends journal entries with travelogue, Kiki Oner and best friend Stelly G return to their island home Viti Lev. During this - their first trip together as adults - they make contact with a past that is unfamiliar to them yet shrouded in memories. What follows is a deeply felt trip that forces them to confront lives almost lived. There will be scenes of confronting pasts, and catastrophic futures.

Number Ones perceives all-the-time-friends, sometimes enemies, Stelly G and Kiki Oner, battling in the first sneaker category in Eora at March’s West Ball. Inspired by Akerman’s One Day Pina Asked…, the film collects shots and edited impressions of the day. Time isn’t linear, the past lives here alongside the future, and Stelly calls on both in the present. I think she knew she would lose the category, and I loved watching her humility, her perseverance, the process, throughout the day, and watching Kiki step even further into her power with the support that comes with the generative competition of a best friend who tells the truth. At one point, off camera, during make-up, Stelly gets her period and runs out to the car to find tampons. Ruffling through her overnight bag she asks: ‘Yes please, yes please, yes please, yes please’.