Becoming the Unaine is a collaborative exhibition by photographer Liz Louise Johnson and linguist Tereua Miracle Oliphant Kaintoka. Johnson lived in Kiribati for eighteen months between 2013 and 2014, and after returning to the United States, studied Kiribati language and culture in a university course taught by Kaintoka, an i-Kiribati scholar. It was the first university-level course dedicated entirely to the culture and language of the small island nation of 112,000 people. Johnson was in the very first classroom, and Kaintoka was the very first professor. It was in this classroom learning about dialects and rituals that a seed was planted, one that would grow, years later, into the beginnings of this project.

Years later, the two reunited and returned to Kiribati to create a project that allowed them to step into a shared circle: a love of the Kiribati people and language, and the common ground of womanhood. It was in this space that Becoming the Unaine was created. 

The project centers on the translation of the Kiribati word unaine: a respected elderly woman of wisdom. Johnson and Kaintoka recreated chronologically the arc of womanhood starting with pregnancy and continued through menarche, and marriage. It weaves together one lived life through 16 women at different ages.