Post on 13-Apr-2018
7242019 Art in Oceania
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A R T I N
A N E W H I S T O R Y
oceaniaPET ER BRUNT N ICHOLAS T HOMAS SEAN MALLON
L ISSANT BOLT ON D EID RE BROWN D AMIAN SK INNER
AN D S US AN NE KUuml CH LE R
ED IT ED BY PET ER BRUNT AND N ICHOLAS T HOMAS
AS SI ST ED BY STE LL A R AM AG E
with 983093983088983095 illustrations 983092983089983090 in colour
7242019 Art in Oceania
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983088983096 Map o Oceania
983089983088 I N T R O D U C T I O N Nicholas Tomas Nguzunguzu in History 983089983091 bull Art and Aesthetics 983089983095 bull History and Histories 983090983089
P A R T O N E A R T I N E A R LY O C E A N I A A E S T H E T I C T R A C E S T H E S E T T L E M E N T O F W E S T
Lissant Bolton
Early Human Settlement in Near Oceania bull Lapita bull Feature Feathers bullPacific bull Voice lsquoEvery design is differentrsquo bull Developments in Western Oce
Feature Shrines and Stories
983093983088 A F T E R L A P I T A V O Y A G I N G A N D M O N U M E N T A L
c 983097983088983088 983138983139991251c 983137983140 983089983095983088983088 Deidre Brown and Peter Brunt
Lapita Foundations 983093983089 bull Exploratory Voyaging and the Settlement o Oceania 983093
bow o Hok ul elsquoarsquo 983093983093 bull Feature Remembering the Ocean 983093983094 bull Centres o Power
in Micronesia 983093983096 bull Centres o Power in Western Polynesia 983094983090 bull Voice lsquoFrom th
ransormations in Polynesian Marae 983094983095 bull Feature Rock Art 983094983096 bull Feature Te
Te Contingency o History 983095983093
P A R T T W O N E W G U I N E A 1 7 0 0 ndash 1 9 4 0
983095983096 A R T T R A D E A N D E X CH A N G E N E W G U I N E A 983089983095983088983088
Nicholas Tomas Susanne Kuumlchler and Lissant Bolton
Diversity and History 983095983097 bull Environment Production and Precolonial lsquoColoniali
Ramifications 983097983088 bull raders o the South Coast 983097983093 bull Feature Balancing Men and
worth takingrsquo 983089983088983091 bull Feature Crocodile into Man 983089983088983092
983089983088983094 A R T WA R A N D P A CI F I CA T I O N N E W G U I N E A 983089983096983092983088
Nicholas Tomas and Susanne Kuumlchler
Voice o the Commodore o the Australian Naval Station 983089983088983096 bull Te Art o the
Headhunting 983089983089983095 bull Te Art o Peacemaking 983089983090983089 bull Feature Rabu Banaky 983089983090983092 bull
and I sorry All finish nowrsquo 983089983090983095 bull Te Consequences o Peace 983089983090983096
983089983091983088 C O S M O L O G I E S A N D C O L L E C T I O N S N E W G U I N E
Nicholas Tomas
Christianity Iconoclasm and Culture 983089983091983090 bull Voice All the People Divided 983089983092983089 bullMoney 983089983092983090 bull Papuan Modernity and the Will to Change 983089983092983093 bull Voice One Day
Collections 983089983092983096 bull Voice lsquoEvery manrsquos house here is a museumrsquo 983089983093983088 bull Feature A
C O N T E N T S
First published in the United Kingdom in by Thames amp Hudson Ltd
High Holborn London
Copyright copy Thames amp Hudson Ltd London
Designed by Maggi Smith
All Rights Reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopy recording or any
other information storage and retrieval system without prior permission in writing from
the publisher
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN ----
Printed and bound in China by Hing Yip Printing Co Ltd
To find out about all our publications please visitwwwthamesandhudsoncom
There you can subscribe to our e-newsletter browse or download our current catalogue
and buy any titles that are in print
frontispiece
Timothy Akis Sikin i
Pulap Long Nil ( Skin Full
of Thorns ) 1977
Screenprint Image height
approx 57 cm (22frac12 in)
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology Cambridge
The publisher and authors are grateful to the following institutions and organizations for their generous support of this project
7242019 Art in Oceania
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P A R T T H R E E I S L A N D M E L A N E S I A 1 7 0 0 ndash 19 4 0
983089983094983088 P L A CE WA R F A R E A N D T R A D E 983089983095983088983088ndash983089983096983092983088 Lissant Bolton
Voice lsquoTe village wakes earlyrsquo 983089983094983091 bull Voice lsquoTe eel is tabu to usrsquo 983089983094983092 bull Landscape and Place 983089983094983093 bull Warare 983089983095983089 bull
rade 983089983095983094 bull Feature Pigs as Art 983089983096983090
983089983096983094 I N CU R S I O N S L O S S CO N T I N U I T Y A N D A D A P T A T I O N 983089983096983092983088ndash983089983097983088983088 Lissant Bolton
Te Potential o New Materials 983089983096983095 bull Feature Creating or Collectors in the Admiralty Islands 983089983097983088 bull Te
Continuity o Ritual 983089983097983090 bull Voice lsquoSuddenly there is a rifle shotrsquo 983089983097983091 bull Depicting Europeans 983090983088983089 bull Feature Death
and Mourning 983090983088983090 bull Te Art in Dancing 983090983088983092 bull Voice lsquoMany people diedrsquo 983090983088983093 bull Feature Humour and History 983090983088983094
bull Political Power and Status 983090983089983090
983090983089983096 T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S 983089983096983097983088ndash983089983097983092983088 Lissant Bolton
Voice lsquoMaltantanu was a very high-ranking manrsquo 983090983090983089 bull Negotiating Christianity 983090983090983090 bull Clothing and
ransormation bull Food and Feasting 983090983090983095 bull Feature the Kalikongu Feast rough 983090983091983088 bull Te Art o Everyday
Lie 983090983091983090 bull Describing Island Melanesia 983090983091983093 bull Objects o Value 983090983091983096
P A R T F O U R E A S T E R N A N D N O R T H E R N O C E A N I A 1 7 0 0ndash 1 94 0 983090983092983092 P O L I T I CA L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S A R T A N D P O WE R 983089983095983088983088ndash983089983096983088983088
Deidre Brown
Te Role o lsquoOro in ahitian Unification 983090983092983093 bull Te Role o Feathered Objects in Hawaiian Unification 983090983093983089 bull
Feature the Birdman Cult 983090983093983090 bull Voice O Ku Your Many Forms 983090983093983092 bull Feature Marquesan Style 983090983094983090 bull extiles
and Stone Money o the Yapese Empire 983090983094983092 bull Voice lsquoTis man is about to come under your mantlersquo 983090983094983094
983090983095983088 E U R O P E A N I N CU R S I O N S 983089983095983094983093ndash983089983096983096983088 Nicholas Tomas
Contact and Commerce 983090983095983089 bull Feature Arsquoa Te Fractal God 983090983096983088 bull Conversion Iconoclasm and Innovation 983090983096983090 bull
Voice lsquoTe chie then ordered his people to make a large firersquo 983090983096983091 bull Te Mana o Script 983090983097983089 bull Voice lsquoImmediatelyafer ood trading beganrsquo 983090983097983092 bull Gain and Loss 983090983097983093 bull Feature lsquoKiribati Bobrsquo 983090983097983094
983090983097983096 C O L O N I A L S T Y L E S A R C H I T E C T U R E A N D I N D I G E N O U S M O D E R N I T Y Deidre Brown
echnological Appropriation 983090983097983097 bull Te Influence o Christianity 983091983088983091 bull Naturalism and Figurative Painting 983091983088983094 bull
Appropriating the West 983091983089983089 bull Feature Gauguinrsquos House o Pleasure 983091983089983092 bull Modernity and raditionalization 983091983089983094bull
Voice o the Minister o Maori Affai rs 983091983089983096 bull Feature Fabricating Society 983091983090983090
P A R T F I V E A R T W A R A N D T H E E N D O F E M P I R E 1940ndash89
983091983090983094 WA R A N D V I S U A L C U L T U R E 983089983097983091983097ndash983092983093 Sean Mallon
Influx Disruption Creation and Enterprise 983091983090983095 bull Voice Ersatz Curios A Flourishing rade in Polynesia 983091983091983090 bull
Cross-Cultural Exchange 983091983091983091 bull Voice War Songs 983091983091983093 bull Military raditions and Iconographies 983091983092983089 bull
Memories Ruins and New Beginnings 983091983092983091 bull Feature War Art 983091983092983092
983091983092983096 D E CO L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N CE A N D CU L T U R
Peter Brunt
Te Lull Kitsch Spectacle and the Lament or Lost Authenticity 983091983093983088 bull Voice lsquoW
estivalsrsquo 983091983093983090 bull Feature Art o the Abelam 983091983093983092 bull Nationhood the Arts and Cult
in the Pacific 983091983094983088 bull Voice lsquoBut what is also vitalhelliprsquo 983091983094983093 bull Modernism and the lsquoNe
should be or a new Oceaniarsquo 983091983095983091bull Feature Ralph Hotere 983091983095983094 bull owards the Pos
983091983096983092 T O U R I S T A R T A N D I T S M A R K E T S 983089983097983092983093ndash983096983097 Sean Mallon
Inrastructure Image and Opportunity 983091983096983094 bull Voice lsquoWhere shall we go this wee
Maori 983091983097983088 bull Fairs Festivals and Museums 983091983097983090 bull ourist Art Development and t
Authentic 983092983088983089 bull Voice lsquoFrom a native daughterrsquo 983092983088983091 bull Indigenous Agency and C
Tours
and the Postcolonial urn 983092983088983094
P A R T S I X A R T I N O C E A N I A N O W 19 89 ndash2
983092983089983088 C O N T E M P O R A R Y P A C I F I C A R T A N D I T S G L O B A L I
Te Space and ime o Contemporary Pacific Art 983092983089983090bull Creating Contemporary
Feature Te Asia Pacific riennial o Contemporary Art 983092983089983094 bull Contemporary Pa
Representation 983092983090983090 bull Feature Gordon Walters and the Cultural Appropriation D
a seabirdrsquo 983092983091983088 bull Contemporary Pacific Art in the Global Art World 983092983091983090 bull Voice
983092983092983088 U R B A N A R T A N D P O P U L A R C U L T U R E Sean Mallon
Protest Power and Politics 983092983092983090 bull Feature Carrying Cultures 983092983092983094 bull Street Culture
erritory 983092983092983096 bull Voice Ea 983092983092983097 bull Disjuncture Continuity and ransnational Conn
as Wearable Art 983092983094983088 bull Pacific Art ransnational Communities Urban Contexts
983092983094983094 C O N T I N U I T Y A N D C H A N G E I N C U S T O M A R Y A R T
Motivations or Change in Customary Art 983092983094983095 bull Feature John Hovell and the Ar
Revival 983092983095983091 bull Material Matters 983092983095983093 bull Culture as Place Culture as Identity 983092983096983089bull C
bull Feature Spiderweb and Vine Te Art o Oumlmie 983092983096983092 bull Voice lsquoWe started calling
Jaki-ed Marshall Islands extiles 983092983097983088 bull Feature Collaborating with the Contemp
983092983097983096 A F T E R W O R D Peter Brunt
Maps
Notes
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Picture Credits
About the Authors
Index
7242019 Art in Oceania
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In the Museum o Modern Art in New York Citymounted a watershed exhibition entitled lsquoArts o the
South Seasrsquo Te topicality o the exhibition reflected
the remarkable prominence o the Pacific Islands in
American consciousness in the afermath o the Second
World War For the Pacific had been a major theatre o
American participation in that conflict with hundreds
o thousands o soldiers stationed in the south Pacific
and numerous islands the scene o fierce battles in the
long campaign to drive back the Japanese Te
encounter between Americans and Islanders deeply
affected their perceptions o each other Te awesome
might o the American military complex transormed
the consciousness o many Islanders in places igniting
imaginings o a specifically American uture filled
with the promise o unlimited wealth material goods
and powers over nature1 Conversely the American
perception o the Pacific was equally ecstatic inspiring
popular musicals sucSouth Pacific which
and exhibitions such
Mounted the yea
the United Nations G
oversee the dismantl
ollowing decades th
o art in Oceania on t
political uture Te s
rom ethnographic c
museums which it a
artrsquo emphasizing the
selection lighting an
supplemented the aes
with a scholarly catal
and artistic tradition
Oceanic art was not n
century European m
Peter Brunt
D E C O L O N I Z A I O N I N D E P E N
A N D C U L U R A L R E V I V A L 1 9 4
opposite
Exhibition catalogue cover
lsquoArts of the South Seasrsquo
designer Ralph Linton
Museum of Modern Art
New York 1946
copy 2010 The Museum of
Modern Art New York
Scala Florence
below left
Installation view of the
exhibition lsquoArts of the South
Seasrsquo Museum of Modern
Art New York 1946
copy 2010 The Museum of
Modern Art New York
Scala Florence
below right
Album cover for a recording
of the Broadway musical
South Pacific
7242019 Art in Oceania
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350 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
collected emulated written about and admired it
within the category o lsquoprimitive artrsquo What was new
according to art historian Robert Goldwater was the
broad public acceptance o such objects as art
occurring in Western metropolises in the mid-
twentieth century in large part through the sanction
o institutions such as the Museum o Modern Art3
But in view o the showrsquos historical moment the
significance o the recategorization was ambiguous
On the one hand it signalled the liberality o
modernist aesthetics drawing objects previously
regarded as curiosities idols or ethnographicdocuments into a discourse about the universality o
artistic orm and eeling Teir new status challenged
centuries o racial prejudice about art as an exclusive
index o European superiority On the other hand
becoming art carried more problematic implications
particularly or the cultures whose art was on view
As Goldwater pointed out writing in the lsquotrendrsquo
towards lsquocomplete aesthetic acceptancersquo coincided
with the process o global decolonization It was
lsquohastened by the establishment o the ormer colonies
as independent nations and the transormation o their
traditional cultures under the impact o modern
technology and economy Te result was that with only
a ew exceptions the primitive arts became arts o the
past (in some cases the very recent past) and thus lost
part o their previous unction as documentation o
contemporary primitive culturesrsquo4 In other words
becoming art in the modern sense was allied to anarrative o modern nationhood in which lsquotraditional
culturesrsquo and lsquoprimitiversquo lie orms were doomed
to obsolescence
Behind Goldwaterrsquos statement is a undamental
modernist narrative about the ate o art in modernity
encapsulated in the nineteenth-century philosopher
G W F Hegelrsquos amous dictum that lsquoart considered
in its highest vocation is and remains or us a thing
o the pastrsquo5 Written in the wake o the French
Revolution the lsquousrsquo Hegel reers to are Western
Europeans caught up in the turbulence o their own
transition into modern nationhood more than a
hundred years earlier Te dictum summarized what
he saw as the destiny o art in the modern world in
which the power o art to give lsquosensuous immediacyrsquo
to human worlds (its lsquohighest vocationrsquo) is eclipsed by
the statersquos rational secular legalistic and bureaucratic
character Art is rendered obsolete and marginal to
the operations o the mo dern state However it is
revalorized as something essentially aesthetic and
historical Hence the birth o the two dominant
institutions o art in Western modernity the art
museum and art history Moreover the continuance
o art in Western modernity was premised on this
sense o its historical nature and marginal social
status ndash as the history o Western modernism and the
avant-garde with their rapid succession o lsquoismsrsquo and
lsquomovementsrsquo has shown
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo poised on the thresholdo global decolonization was thus a deeply loaded
exhibition Its objects gathered rom museums pointed
to the impact o colonialism and the imperial order on
Pacific societies while its occasion pointed
enigmatically to a postcolonial uture It begged the
question o the uture o the soc ieties that its artworks
displayed For Goldwater they must give way to t he
irresistible transormations entailed in the making
o modern nation states and the spread o lsquouniversal
civilizationrsquo summed up by Paul Ricoeur in as
the ineluctable orces o democratization capitalist
economics and science and technology 6 In this context
the artistic traditions o these societies were ated to
become arts o the past a s many already had But the
history o decolonization in the Pacific would prove
less punctual more contradictory and ambiguous
than Goldwaterrsquos stoic aestheticism allowed
Te Lull Kitsch Spectacle and theLament for Lost Authenticity
Te first decade or so afer the Second World War
was marked by a kind o lull in the Pacific a pause
between the demise o the imperial system and the
political restructuring that dominated the region rom
the s to the s Tis was a period o anticipation
but uncertainty Many developments clearly pointed to
a postcolonial uture Te lsquogreat powersrsquo had signalled
their intention to reorder the world system at various
summits afer the war Colonies in Arica and South
Asia were already crumbling More locally indentured
labour laws were lifed in Australian New Guinea
France granted greater political autonomy to its Pacific
territories independence parties ormed in ahiti and
New Caledonia preparations or independence were
under way in Western Samoa and so on Nonetheless
the uture o imperial rule was still unclear Pre-war
governance structures were restored in many places
afer the war Racial ideologies o white superiority
and right to rule remained in place (and would not
definitively crumble until the s or later) Settlers in
colonial towns expected reorm but not necessarily thecomplete dismantling o the imperial order And in
places where lsquodevelopmentrsquo was minimal ndash in much
o New Guinea and the New Hebrides or example ndash
indigenous sel-government seemed a long way off
In this liminal state the subject o art in the
Pacific was largely inchoate dispersed in a variety o
aesthetically ambiguous contexts One o these lay
at the intersection between art museums cultural
anthropology the tribal art trade and an uncounted
number o small hamlets and villages particularly
in New Guinea and island Melanesia which still
produced or possessed the lsquoauthenticrsquo or lsquoquality piecesrsquo
that primitive art collectors and museums desired
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo exemplified this intersection
While this nexus o activities was certainly continuous
with practices beore the war the post-war period was
marked by a growing anxiety about the shrinking
opportunities to colle
the prolieration o a
the disruptive effects
commercial enterpri
kind o societies that
lsquovanishing primitiversquo
European collecting
Te anthropologist C
this ear in his popul
published in in w
anthropologyrsquos quest
given the pervasiventhroughout the world
mounted collecting e
to acquire ndash lsquoBeore I
it ndash what remained o
ake or examp
expedition to the Asm
in (lsquoill-atedrsquo bec
circumstances afer h
Rockeeller son o N
Rockeeller was a we
and photographer wh
acquire examples o A
established Museum
where he was also a t
recently and very par
Dutch administrator
priests were among
Guinearsquos tribes becautraditions associated
headhunting While
abandoned by m
culture was still thriv
the interests o missi
anthropologists ndash all
acilitating Rockeell
what was seen by him
the spectacular canoe
array o shields cere
out or bargaining ndash w
cameras ( page )In
ethnographic value c
terms o the importa
relationships Wester
rom prestigious art
superpowers were cle
Advertisement lsquoYour native
servantrsquo Pacific Islands
Monthly February 1951
This advertisement from a 1951
issue of Pacific Islands Monthly
reveals racial hierarchies and
colonial social norms still in
place after the Second World
War ndash though not for much
longer Published between
1931 and 2000 the regional
magazine reflected the
transformation of political and
ideological attitudes during the
decolonization era
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 623
V
O
I C
E
D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T U
relationships were vital to the uture o Asmat culture
Nonetheless tropes o the lsquolastrsquo and the lsquovanishingrsquo
were indomitable and widely recycled in documentary
films illustrated magazines television eatures
newspaper articles and so on
Te counterpart to this lament or lost authenticity
in the immediate post-war decades was the
prolieration o tourist art and Oceanic kitsch As
discussed in the previous chapter the presence o
hundreds o thousands o soldiers in the Pacific duringthe Second World War created a lucrative t rade in
arteacts and souvenirs ndash lsquoersatz curiosrsquo as one writer
called them10 Te impact o that exchange reverberates
in the post-war popularization o Oceanic art within
the visual culture o the American leisure industry
Hotels motels restaurant chains and cocktail lounges
with names like lsquorader Vicsrsquo lsquoiki Bobsrsquo and lsquoAloha
Joesrsquo multiplied across the American suburban
landscape in the s and s Teir decor schemes
and advertising graphics appropriated Oceanic art
orms rom art books and exhibition catalogues Masks
and figurines became lounge ornaments while
entertainment shows mimicked cannibals headhunters
and hula dancers in a vast burlesque o Leacutevi-Straussrsquos
historical lament11 Although the genre has its charms
the translation o god figures and ritual sacra into
paperweights and saltshakers represents at its urthest
above left
Dr Adrian Gerbrands
Assistant Director of
the Rijksmuseum voor
Volkenkunde in Leiden
assists Michael Rockefeller
in making a selection of
Asmat shields for the
Museum of Primitive Art
in New York 1961
above right
Barney Westrsquos lsquoTiki Junctionrsquo
Sausalito California c 1968
Ersatz copies of Oceanic art
were made for sale to decorate
motel grounds bar rooms
home gardens and the like
This was part of a post-war
fad for tribal styles and there
was little concern for issues of
authenticity or cultural property
lsquo W H Y D I D M Y P E O P L E A B A N D O N T H E I R F E S T I V A L S rsquo
When the Hevehe masks finally came out of the eravo they danced in
the village for a month In the end the spirits had to be driven back into
the spirit world after staying with us for so long This was accomplished
ceremonially by the slaying of the Hevehe in which a young man was
selected to shoot an arrow at the leader of the masks and lsquokillrsquo it After
that the masks are ceremonially burned and the ashes and all other
remains from the Hevehe festival are thrown into the sea where the great
spirit of all Hevehes resides who will swallow them up
Unfortunately this ceremony was discontinued just before the war and
even the Kovave itself was abandoned some t wenty-five years ago My
own Kovave initiation was the one before the last
Why did my people abandon their festivals The missionaries got a lot of
the blame It is true of course that they did not like the initiation rites and
rather tended to discourage them But at that time their influence was not
all that great in Orokolo
I believe that taxation was a major factor Even though the tax was only
ten shillings per head at first and one pound later on t he young men had
to go out and earn it for themselves and their fathers So they drifted off
to Kerema and maybe Moresby seeking employment in shops or with
white masters While they were earning the money nobody remained athome to take an active part in the ceremonies Many of them lost interest
when they saw other more lsquorespecta blersquo ways of life
Excerpt from Albert Maori Kiki Kiki Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime
A New Guinea Autobiography Melbourne 1968 i
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE ABELAM ARE ONE OF THE LARGEST
groups in lowland Papua New Guinea They live
in villages of up to 900 people in the foothills of
the Prince Alexander Mountains north of the
Sepik River The Australian administration first
established a government post in their territory in 1937
re-establishing it in 1948 after the Japanese occupation
Thus it was only from the Second World War that the Abelam
were significantly affected by colonial influence and only after
that time that their art came to the attention of the wider world
The energetic brightly painted carvings and paintings made as
part of the long yam cult displayed on and in the cult houses
have since attracted substantial international interest especially
on the part of museums Whole cult house facades and the
carved and woven displays within them have been collected by
a number of museums the Australian Museum and the British
Museum among them A number of anthropologists notably
Anthony Forge and Diane Losche have worked with Abelam
communities and have been drawn by that engagement into
discussing the anthropology of art to questions about the
meaning and significance of specific designs and images
and into broader questions about the nature of art in those
societies where such a category does not exist
Abelam art is displayed in the village in and in front of
menrsquos cult houses Abelam hamlets are built on ridges the
houses are built around a central plaza the forest behind
them Many hamlets have a cult house which towers over
the domestic houses Houses have an A-frame construction
dependent on a long ridge pole supported close to the
ground at the back of the house and sweeping up at the front
cult-house ridge poles can rear up to 18 metres (59 ft) high
The sides of the house sloping away from the ridge pole to
the ground are at the same time its roof thatched with sago
palm leaves The Abelam see the roof-sides of the house as
being like the folded wings of a bird enclosing the space
withini The facade of the cult house is painted in a range of
reds yellows black and white in designs that often represent
the clan spirits or ngwalndu
The long yam cult focuses on the growing display and
exchange of special yams single straight cylindrical tubers
that are carefully and ritually cultivated to reach lengths of
more than 25 or 3 metres (8ndash10 ft) To be a man of substance
a man must be able to grow such yams as the anthropologist
Phyllis Kaberry observed there is a great deal of identification
between a man and his yam there is also a great deal of
identification between the yam and the supernaturalii Initiation
rituals focused on the long yam cult involve the manufacture
of woven and carved painted figures representing clan spirits
which are displayed inside the house decorated with leaves
flowers and fruit This process of making ndash the production
of yams of carvings and paintings ndash draws man and spirit
together The Abelam see paint as crucial to that process
The Abelam do not think about art but about the power
of images and especially of paint itself All Abelam magical
substances are classed as paint various colours being suitable
for various purposes red and a sort of purple the colours of
the substances used for sorcery and long yams are regarded
as the most powerfuliii For the Abelam painting is a sacred
activity in ritual contexts the paint itself is the medium
through which the benefits of the ceremony are transferred
to the initiates and to the village as a whole Paint is t he
essential magical substance of the yam cult LB
Art of the Ab ela m
Decorated menrsquos house
Abelam tribe Sepik District
New Guinea
Photograph Anthony Forge
1962
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 823
356 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
extreme the radical dissemination o Oceanic art
into mass-produced commodities unredeemed by the
quasi-sanctity o the art museum Te phenomenon
was not confined to the United States It extended into
Oceania as well in towns such as Honolulu Papeete
Apia Rotorua Port Vila Agana and elsewhere
Indigenous artists made carvings and handicrafs or
commercial enterprises overseas and Islanders
provided perormers or entertainment shows in hotels
and tourist parks Te Pacific was also translated into
countless pictorial variations o noble chies sunsetbeaches dusky maidens palm-tree villages and other
clicheacuted variations o the erotic and picturesque ndash a set
o genres produced by a host o travelling artists
amateur painters and Islanders as well As Sima
Urale demonstrates in her documentary film on
the velvet painter Charles McPhee the heyday o
these popular genres corresponded with the twilight
years o the colonial Pacific when its visual stereotype
reigned unchallenged12
Customary arts were also increasingly bound to
tourism and media spectacle From the late s the
Pacific Islands upgraded or built new airfields and
hotels and linked into international airline routes in
order to capitalize on the economic opportunities o
an expanded tourist industry in the looming lsquojet agersquo
In the first Goroka show was staged in the New
Guinea Highlands as a spectacular event eaturing
some ten thousand native perormers assembled or
dances games mock fights and the like dressed in
dazzling displays o traditional costume Although the
show was conceived by the Australian administration
in order to build regional unity across rival tribal
groups its success was inseparable rom the attendance
o hundreds o European visitors lsquowith expensive
cameras exposure meters and tripodshelliptaking movies
or expensive colour stillsrsquo13 In a similar event the
Mount Hagen show also in New Guinea described by
Pacific Islands Monthly as lsquothe greatest native show on
earthrsquo eatured a staggering seventy thousandparticipants and was attended by over a thousand
European visitors including documentary filmmakers
and editors o international magazines like National
Geographic and American Readerrsquos Digest people
flown in on chartered aircraf14 In other words the
Pacific was bound up in what Guy Debord called the
vast lsquospectaculariz ationrsquo o society in the post-war era
dominated by consumer capitalism in which the
image itsel in a variety o media was the primary
object o production
and stereotyped Pac
spectacle but they w
consumers Te Pacifi
magazines and Islan
Wayne and Mickey M
global lsquoculture indus
lsquospectaclersquo by post-wa
turned into society a
the Pacific
Yet the expansio
commercialization opredominant vehicle
a growing anxiety w
particularly among t
movements or politi
the s and s t
over the production
legacy Consider or
o Māori Arts and Cr
Rotorua had been a t
above left
Savea Malietoa
untitled painting nd
Oil on board 65 x 124 cm
(25 5 frasl 8 x 48 7 frasl 8 in) Courtesy
Maina Afamasaga
Oil paintings of village scenes
and tropical sunsets were
and still are commonplace
in many Samoan homes and
businesses One of Samoarsquos
best and most prolific artists
was Savea Malietoa In this
painting he depicts a faletele
(big house) and modern church
in a village setting
below left
Charlie McPhee untitled oil
painting on velvet c 1960
In 1997 Samoan filmmaker
Sima Urale made a film about
velvet painter Charlie McPhee
who had lived a lsquocolourful lifersquo
in the Pacific seeking pleasure
adventure and women A
lsquomockumentaryrsquo and a tribute
the film used this painting by
the artist as the exemplary
lsquoobject of desirersquo for an era
that was passing
Mount Hagen show 1965
Photograph David BealANTA
State Library NSW Sydney
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358 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
nineteenth century eaturing Māori cultural
perormances tours in geothermal parks and souvenirs
or sale It was also where Sir Apirana Ngata established
the School o Māori Arts and Crafs in which
spearheaded the recovery o the art o carving rom
near oblivion and did much to rehabilitate whare
whakairo (carved and decorated meeting houses) and
Māori ceremonies among tribes and sub-tribes in the
s and s16 Te School had waned afer the war
but was re-established by an Act o Parliament in
as the Institute o Māori Arts and Crafs and placed
under the Department o ourism But while theSchool had managed to balance its services to the
tourist industry with the goals o cultural preservation
the Institute ound itsel increasingly dominated by
tourism It became a closed system producing
qualified carvers to produce high-end souvenirs or
a very limited market effectively centred around the
Institute itsel However in a telling shif the Institute
was criticized by other Māori Some Māori modernists
(to be discussed later in the chapter) saw the Institute
as irrelevant and out o date while Māori academic
Hirini Moko Mead elt that its educational unctions
had been compromised by its placement under the
Department o ourism Pointing to the lsquoenced and
raised walk-wayrsquo provided or tourists to lsquolook down
in saety upon the curiosities working at their benchesrsquo
(see page ) Mead concluded lsquoTe trainees and their
instructor are exhibited like prize animals in a zoorsquo17
Such critiques indicated a new assertiveness about the value and meaning o ind igenous art and culture Te
lull was over
Nationhood the Arts and Cultural Revival
Te drive or independence and political
re-empowerment which galvanized the Pacific rom
the s to the s reocused the relevance o art
and the arts in Oceania Above all the prospect o new
nationhood brought about a dramatic resurgence o
customary culture and tradition recoded in national
terms Te ethos o revival was encapsulated by Sir
Apirana Ngata in (the year New Zealand became
ormally independent rom Great Britain) when he
predicted that lsquoa great uture lay ahead o the Pacificrsquo
and admonished Māori to lsquotake a bigger part in the
economic social and commercial lie o New Zealand
and to keep alive their native traditions and bring about
a full revival of Māori culturersquo 18 Ngatarsquos philosophy
o reviving lsquonative traditionsrsquo while embracing the
conditions o modern nationhood would be echoed by
indigenous leaders across the Pacific as decolonization
became a political reality beginning in the s
Te political history o decolonization is complex
and cannot be ully recounted here but a ew salient
points are worth making One is the dramatic nature
o imperial withdrawal rom the Pacific (as rom other
parts o the world) At the end o the Second World
War the entire region was under some orm o direct
imperial or external rule By the end o the simperial governance had largely been dismantled
leaving in its wake a host o new Pacific states Bar
some exceptions most were ully independent nations
or independent lsquoin ree association withrsquo their ormer
colonial power Where independence had not been
achieved or stalled or ormally rejected those
continuing territories nonetheless enjoyed significantly
greater political autonomy than existed in the pre-war
era19 In other words however qualified by the messy
specificities o particular situations decolonization
was part o a concerted process to restructure the
global political social and economic order
(Decolonization in this sense should not be conused
with myriad struggles against colonialism which
certainly made the most o the opportunities o ormal
decolonization but have much older histories and
continue into the present)
A second point is the uneven incomplete andcontradictory character o decolonization in the
Pacific Te possibility o national independence
was undoubtedly the dominant political ambition o
Pacific leaders though it played out differently across
the region and no simple generalization is possible
In territories administered by anglophone powers
(Britain Australia New Zealand and the United
States) independence was generally agreed upon as
the mutually preerred outcome (However this was
not true in all cases American Samoa and Guam
elected to remain territories o the United States and
there were many people ndash in Fiji onga and Austra lian
New Guinea or example ndash who elt independence was
being oisted on them whether they wanted it or not)
Western Samoa got the ball rolling when it became
independent rom New Zealand administration in
An impressive succession o new states ollowed the
Cook Islands in Nauru in onga and Fiji in
Niue in Papua New Guinea in uvalu
and the Solomon Islands in Vanuatu in
the Marshall Islands and the Federated States o
Micronesia in and Belau in Te list testifies
to the supra-national orces driving decolonization
But it also obscures the difficult business o actually
achieving nationhood and the precarious nature o
many o the states thus created It obscures too the
many disputes ndash about the timing o decolonization
the geography o borders the nature o constitutions
and parliamentary structures the continuedexploitation o islands used as naval bases and nuclear
testing sites in the politics o the Cold War etcetera
ndash that complicated and interered with decolonizationrsquos
inexorable outcome
In the French Pacific independence was a much
more contested objective France saw decolonization
differently to the anglophone powers20 While it
granted French citizenship rights and significant
political autonomy to its Pacific territories soon afer
the Second World War it stopped short o ull
independence and generally opposed and even
obstructed political movements in that direction
seeing decolonization rather as transpiring within
the greater rancophone republic Moreover loyalties
to France among local settler lsquodemirsquo and migrant
populations made the indigenous struggle or
independence a matter o intense and sometimes
violent political dispute Only in the c ase o the NewHebrides (Vanuatu) which France had jointly ruled
with Britain since did a French colony become
ully independent Nationhood and independence
were also complicated in the anglophone settler states
o Hawailsquoi New Zealand and Australia where
nineteenth-century colonization and massive settler
migration had reduced indigenous people to minorities
in their own land Indeed the weight o this history
led to the Hawaiian Islands becoming an American
state in In these places settler withdrawal was
impossible and decolonization played out rather as
a struggle or rights recognition return o illegally
expropriated land and social political and economic
re-empowerment
Te contradictory character o decolonization is
also illustrated by the ate o West Papua ormerly
Netherlands New Guinea which ound itsel caught
up in the opportunis
neighbour Indonesia
Afer winning its ind
Indonesia laid claim
part o its national te
quit the colony and h
disputed the legitima
developed between th
s Recognizing th
rantically strugg led
tasks o sel-governm
national flag o West
was raised in the terr
set or independenceIndonesia pressed its
President Sukarno in
rhetoric against the D
War ears to neutrali
Australia and the Un
the rise o communis
to make an enemy o
threatening to take N
and indeed he invade
With little internatio
to war or the colony
control o West Papu
United Nations ndash to I
renamed it West Iria
to this affair Indones
on sel-government i
circumstances in whi
The Morning Star flag of
independent West Papua
now illegal under
Indonesian law
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1623
372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 223
983088983096 Map o Oceania
983089983088 I N T R O D U C T I O N Nicholas Tomas Nguzunguzu in History 983089983091 bull Art and Aesthetics 983089983095 bull History and Histories 983090983089
P A R T O N E A R T I N E A R LY O C E A N I A A E S T H E T I C T R A C E S T H E S E T T L E M E N T O F W E S T
Lissant Bolton
Early Human Settlement in Near Oceania bull Lapita bull Feature Feathers bullPacific bull Voice lsquoEvery design is differentrsquo bull Developments in Western Oce
Feature Shrines and Stories
983093983088 A F T E R L A P I T A V O Y A G I N G A N D M O N U M E N T A L
c 983097983088983088 983138983139991251c 983137983140 983089983095983088983088 Deidre Brown and Peter Brunt
Lapita Foundations 983093983089 bull Exploratory Voyaging and the Settlement o Oceania 983093
bow o Hok ul elsquoarsquo 983093983093 bull Feature Remembering the Ocean 983093983094 bull Centres o Power
in Micronesia 983093983096 bull Centres o Power in Western Polynesia 983094983090 bull Voice lsquoFrom th
ransormations in Polynesian Marae 983094983095 bull Feature Rock Art 983094983096 bull Feature Te
Te Contingency o History 983095983093
P A R T T W O N E W G U I N E A 1 7 0 0 ndash 1 9 4 0
983095983096 A R T T R A D E A N D E X CH A N G E N E W G U I N E A 983089983095983088983088
Nicholas Tomas Susanne Kuumlchler and Lissant Bolton
Diversity and History 983095983097 bull Environment Production and Precolonial lsquoColoniali
Ramifications 983097983088 bull raders o the South Coast 983097983093 bull Feature Balancing Men and
worth takingrsquo 983089983088983091 bull Feature Crocodile into Man 983089983088983092
983089983088983094 A R T WA R A N D P A CI F I CA T I O N N E W G U I N E A 983089983096983092983088
Nicholas Tomas and Susanne Kuumlchler
Voice o the Commodore o the Australian Naval Station 983089983088983096 bull Te Art o the
Headhunting 983089983089983095 bull Te Art o Peacemaking 983089983090983089 bull Feature Rabu Banaky 983089983090983092 bull
and I sorry All finish nowrsquo 983089983090983095 bull Te Consequences o Peace 983089983090983096
983089983091983088 C O S M O L O G I E S A N D C O L L E C T I O N S N E W G U I N E
Nicholas Tomas
Christianity Iconoclasm and Culture 983089983091983090 bull Voice All the People Divided 983089983092983089 bullMoney 983089983092983090 bull Papuan Modernity and the Will to Change 983089983092983093 bull Voice One Day
Collections 983089983092983096 bull Voice lsquoEvery manrsquos house here is a museumrsquo 983089983093983088 bull Feature A
C O N T E N T S
First published in the United Kingdom in by Thames amp Hudson Ltd
High Holborn London
Copyright copy Thames amp Hudson Ltd London
Designed by Maggi Smith
All Rights Reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means electronic or mechanical including photocopy recording or any
other information storage and retrieval system without prior permission in writing from
the publisher
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN ----
Printed and bound in China by Hing Yip Printing Co Ltd
To find out about all our publications please visitwwwthamesandhudsoncom
There you can subscribe to our e-newsletter browse or download our current catalogue
and buy any titles that are in print
frontispiece
Timothy Akis Sikin i
Pulap Long Nil ( Skin Full
of Thorns ) 1977
Screenprint Image height
approx 57 cm (22frac12 in)
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology Cambridge
The publisher and authors are grateful to the following institutions and organizations for their generous support of this project
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 323
P A R T T H R E E I S L A N D M E L A N E S I A 1 7 0 0 ndash 19 4 0
983089983094983088 P L A CE WA R F A R E A N D T R A D E 983089983095983088983088ndash983089983096983092983088 Lissant Bolton
Voice lsquoTe village wakes earlyrsquo 983089983094983091 bull Voice lsquoTe eel is tabu to usrsquo 983089983094983092 bull Landscape and Place 983089983094983093 bull Warare 983089983095983089 bull
rade 983089983095983094 bull Feature Pigs as Art 983089983096983090
983089983096983094 I N CU R S I O N S L O S S CO N T I N U I T Y A N D A D A P T A T I O N 983089983096983092983088ndash983089983097983088983088 Lissant Bolton
Te Potential o New Materials 983089983096983095 bull Feature Creating or Collectors in the Admiralty Islands 983089983097983088 bull Te
Continuity o Ritual 983089983097983090 bull Voice lsquoSuddenly there is a rifle shotrsquo 983089983097983091 bull Depicting Europeans 983090983088983089 bull Feature Death
and Mourning 983090983088983090 bull Te Art in Dancing 983090983088983092 bull Voice lsquoMany people diedrsquo 983090983088983093 bull Feature Humour and History 983090983088983094
bull Political Power and Status 983090983089983090
983090983089983096 T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S 983089983096983097983088ndash983089983097983092983088 Lissant Bolton
Voice lsquoMaltantanu was a very high-ranking manrsquo 983090983090983089 bull Negotiating Christianity 983090983090983090 bull Clothing and
ransormation bull Food and Feasting 983090983090983095 bull Feature the Kalikongu Feast rough 983090983091983088 bull Te Art o Everyday
Lie 983090983091983090 bull Describing Island Melanesia 983090983091983093 bull Objects o Value 983090983091983096
P A R T F O U R E A S T E R N A N D N O R T H E R N O C E A N I A 1 7 0 0ndash 1 94 0 983090983092983092 P O L I T I CA L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S A R T A N D P O WE R 983089983095983088983088ndash983089983096983088983088
Deidre Brown
Te Role o lsquoOro in ahitian Unification 983090983092983093 bull Te Role o Feathered Objects in Hawaiian Unification 983090983093983089 bull
Feature the Birdman Cult 983090983093983090 bull Voice O Ku Your Many Forms 983090983093983092 bull Feature Marquesan Style 983090983094983090 bull extiles
and Stone Money o the Yapese Empire 983090983094983092 bull Voice lsquoTis man is about to come under your mantlersquo 983090983094983094
983090983095983088 E U R O P E A N I N CU R S I O N S 983089983095983094983093ndash983089983096983096983088 Nicholas Tomas
Contact and Commerce 983090983095983089 bull Feature Arsquoa Te Fractal God 983090983096983088 bull Conversion Iconoclasm and Innovation 983090983096983090 bull
Voice lsquoTe chie then ordered his people to make a large firersquo 983090983096983091 bull Te Mana o Script 983090983097983089 bull Voice lsquoImmediatelyafer ood trading beganrsquo 983090983097983092 bull Gain and Loss 983090983097983093 bull Feature lsquoKiribati Bobrsquo 983090983097983094
983090983097983096 C O L O N I A L S T Y L E S A R C H I T E C T U R E A N D I N D I G E N O U S M O D E R N I T Y Deidre Brown
echnological Appropriation 983090983097983097 bull Te Influence o Christianity 983091983088983091 bull Naturalism and Figurative Painting 983091983088983094 bull
Appropriating the West 983091983089983089 bull Feature Gauguinrsquos House o Pleasure 983091983089983092 bull Modernity and raditionalization 983091983089983094bull
Voice o the Minister o Maori Affai rs 983091983089983096 bull Feature Fabricating Society 983091983090983090
P A R T F I V E A R T W A R A N D T H E E N D O F E M P I R E 1940ndash89
983091983090983094 WA R A N D V I S U A L C U L T U R E 983089983097983091983097ndash983092983093 Sean Mallon
Influx Disruption Creation and Enterprise 983091983090983095 bull Voice Ersatz Curios A Flourishing rade in Polynesia 983091983091983090 bull
Cross-Cultural Exchange 983091983091983091 bull Voice War Songs 983091983091983093 bull Military raditions and Iconographies 983091983092983089 bull
Memories Ruins and New Beginnings 983091983092983091 bull Feature War Art 983091983092983092
983091983092983096 D E CO L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N CE A N D CU L T U R
Peter Brunt
Te Lull Kitsch Spectacle and the Lament or Lost Authenticity 983091983093983088 bull Voice lsquoW
estivalsrsquo 983091983093983090 bull Feature Art o the Abelam 983091983093983092 bull Nationhood the Arts and Cult
in the Pacific 983091983094983088 bull Voice lsquoBut what is also vitalhelliprsquo 983091983094983093 bull Modernism and the lsquoNe
should be or a new Oceaniarsquo 983091983095983091bull Feature Ralph Hotere 983091983095983094 bull owards the Pos
983091983096983092 T O U R I S T A R T A N D I T S M A R K E T S 983089983097983092983093ndash983096983097 Sean Mallon
Inrastructure Image and Opportunity 983091983096983094 bull Voice lsquoWhere shall we go this wee
Maori 983091983097983088 bull Fairs Festivals and Museums 983091983097983090 bull ourist Art Development and t
Authentic 983092983088983089 bull Voice lsquoFrom a native daughterrsquo 983092983088983091 bull Indigenous Agency and C
Tours
and the Postcolonial urn 983092983088983094
P A R T S I X A R T I N O C E A N I A N O W 19 89 ndash2
983092983089983088 C O N T E M P O R A R Y P A C I F I C A R T A N D I T S G L O B A L I
Te Space and ime o Contemporary Pacific Art 983092983089983090bull Creating Contemporary
Feature Te Asia Pacific riennial o Contemporary Art 983092983089983094 bull Contemporary Pa
Representation 983092983090983090 bull Feature Gordon Walters and the Cultural Appropriation D
a seabirdrsquo 983092983091983088 bull Contemporary Pacific Art in the Global Art World 983092983091983090 bull Voice
983092983092983088 U R B A N A R T A N D P O P U L A R C U L T U R E Sean Mallon
Protest Power and Politics 983092983092983090 bull Feature Carrying Cultures 983092983092983094 bull Street Culture
erritory 983092983092983096 bull Voice Ea 983092983092983097 bull Disjuncture Continuity and ransnational Conn
as Wearable Art 983092983094983088 bull Pacific Art ransnational Communities Urban Contexts
983092983094983094 C O N T I N U I T Y A N D C H A N G E I N C U S T O M A R Y A R T
Motivations or Change in Customary Art 983092983094983095 bull Feature John Hovell and the Ar
Revival 983092983095983091 bull Material Matters 983092983095983093 bull Culture as Place Culture as Identity 983092983096983089bull C
bull Feature Spiderweb and Vine Te Art o Oumlmie 983092983096983092 bull Voice lsquoWe started calling
Jaki-ed Marshall Islands extiles 983092983097983088 bull Feature Collaborating with the Contemp
983092983097983096 A F T E R W O R D Peter Brunt
Maps
Notes
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Picture Credits
About the Authors
Index
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 423
In the Museum o Modern Art in New York Citymounted a watershed exhibition entitled lsquoArts o the
South Seasrsquo Te topicality o the exhibition reflected
the remarkable prominence o the Pacific Islands in
American consciousness in the afermath o the Second
World War For the Pacific had been a major theatre o
American participation in that conflict with hundreds
o thousands o soldiers stationed in the south Pacific
and numerous islands the scene o fierce battles in the
long campaign to drive back the Japanese Te
encounter between Americans and Islanders deeply
affected their perceptions o each other Te awesome
might o the American military complex transormed
the consciousness o many Islanders in places igniting
imaginings o a specifically American uture filled
with the promise o unlimited wealth material goods
and powers over nature1 Conversely the American
perception o the Pacific was equally ecstatic inspiring
popular musicals sucSouth Pacific which
and exhibitions such
Mounted the yea
the United Nations G
oversee the dismantl
ollowing decades th
o art in Oceania on t
political uture Te s
rom ethnographic c
museums which it a
artrsquo emphasizing the
selection lighting an
supplemented the aes
with a scholarly catal
and artistic tradition
Oceanic art was not n
century European m
Peter Brunt
D E C O L O N I Z A I O N I N D E P E N
A N D C U L U R A L R E V I V A L 1 9 4
opposite
Exhibition catalogue cover
lsquoArts of the South Seasrsquo
designer Ralph Linton
Museum of Modern Art
New York 1946
copy 2010 The Museum of
Modern Art New York
Scala Florence
below left
Installation view of the
exhibition lsquoArts of the South
Seasrsquo Museum of Modern
Art New York 1946
copy 2010 The Museum of
Modern Art New York
Scala Florence
below right
Album cover for a recording
of the Broadway musical
South Pacific
7242019 Art in Oceania
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350 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
collected emulated written about and admired it
within the category o lsquoprimitive artrsquo What was new
according to art historian Robert Goldwater was the
broad public acceptance o such objects as art
occurring in Western metropolises in the mid-
twentieth century in large part through the sanction
o institutions such as the Museum o Modern Art3
But in view o the showrsquos historical moment the
significance o the recategorization was ambiguous
On the one hand it signalled the liberality o
modernist aesthetics drawing objects previously
regarded as curiosities idols or ethnographicdocuments into a discourse about the universality o
artistic orm and eeling Teir new status challenged
centuries o racial prejudice about art as an exclusive
index o European superiority On the other hand
becoming art carried more problematic implications
particularly or the cultures whose art was on view
As Goldwater pointed out writing in the lsquotrendrsquo
towards lsquocomplete aesthetic acceptancersquo coincided
with the process o global decolonization It was
lsquohastened by the establishment o the ormer colonies
as independent nations and the transormation o their
traditional cultures under the impact o modern
technology and economy Te result was that with only
a ew exceptions the primitive arts became arts o the
past (in some cases the very recent past) and thus lost
part o their previous unction as documentation o
contemporary primitive culturesrsquo4 In other words
becoming art in the modern sense was allied to anarrative o modern nationhood in which lsquotraditional
culturesrsquo and lsquoprimitiversquo lie orms were doomed
to obsolescence
Behind Goldwaterrsquos statement is a undamental
modernist narrative about the ate o art in modernity
encapsulated in the nineteenth-century philosopher
G W F Hegelrsquos amous dictum that lsquoart considered
in its highest vocation is and remains or us a thing
o the pastrsquo5 Written in the wake o the French
Revolution the lsquousrsquo Hegel reers to are Western
Europeans caught up in the turbulence o their own
transition into modern nationhood more than a
hundred years earlier Te dictum summarized what
he saw as the destiny o art in the modern world in
which the power o art to give lsquosensuous immediacyrsquo
to human worlds (its lsquohighest vocationrsquo) is eclipsed by
the statersquos rational secular legalistic and bureaucratic
character Art is rendered obsolete and marginal to
the operations o the mo dern state However it is
revalorized as something essentially aesthetic and
historical Hence the birth o the two dominant
institutions o art in Western modernity the art
museum and art history Moreover the continuance
o art in Western modernity was premised on this
sense o its historical nature and marginal social
status ndash as the history o Western modernism and the
avant-garde with their rapid succession o lsquoismsrsquo and
lsquomovementsrsquo has shown
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo poised on the thresholdo global decolonization was thus a deeply loaded
exhibition Its objects gathered rom museums pointed
to the impact o colonialism and the imperial order on
Pacific societies while its occasion pointed
enigmatically to a postcolonial uture It begged the
question o the uture o the soc ieties that its artworks
displayed For Goldwater they must give way to t he
irresistible transormations entailed in the making
o modern nation states and the spread o lsquouniversal
civilizationrsquo summed up by Paul Ricoeur in as
the ineluctable orces o democratization capitalist
economics and science and technology 6 In this context
the artistic traditions o these societies were ated to
become arts o the past a s many already had But the
history o decolonization in the Pacific would prove
less punctual more contradictory and ambiguous
than Goldwaterrsquos stoic aestheticism allowed
Te Lull Kitsch Spectacle and theLament for Lost Authenticity
Te first decade or so afer the Second World War
was marked by a kind o lull in the Pacific a pause
between the demise o the imperial system and the
political restructuring that dominated the region rom
the s to the s Tis was a period o anticipation
but uncertainty Many developments clearly pointed to
a postcolonial uture Te lsquogreat powersrsquo had signalled
their intention to reorder the world system at various
summits afer the war Colonies in Arica and South
Asia were already crumbling More locally indentured
labour laws were lifed in Australian New Guinea
France granted greater political autonomy to its Pacific
territories independence parties ormed in ahiti and
New Caledonia preparations or independence were
under way in Western Samoa and so on Nonetheless
the uture o imperial rule was still unclear Pre-war
governance structures were restored in many places
afer the war Racial ideologies o white superiority
and right to rule remained in place (and would not
definitively crumble until the s or later) Settlers in
colonial towns expected reorm but not necessarily thecomplete dismantling o the imperial order And in
places where lsquodevelopmentrsquo was minimal ndash in much
o New Guinea and the New Hebrides or example ndash
indigenous sel-government seemed a long way off
In this liminal state the subject o art in the
Pacific was largely inchoate dispersed in a variety o
aesthetically ambiguous contexts One o these lay
at the intersection between art museums cultural
anthropology the tribal art trade and an uncounted
number o small hamlets and villages particularly
in New Guinea and island Melanesia which still
produced or possessed the lsquoauthenticrsquo or lsquoquality piecesrsquo
that primitive art collectors and museums desired
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo exemplified this intersection
While this nexus o activities was certainly continuous
with practices beore the war the post-war period was
marked by a growing anxiety about the shrinking
opportunities to colle
the prolieration o a
the disruptive effects
commercial enterpri
kind o societies that
lsquovanishing primitiversquo
European collecting
Te anthropologist C
this ear in his popul
published in in w
anthropologyrsquos quest
given the pervasiventhroughout the world
mounted collecting e
to acquire ndash lsquoBeore I
it ndash what remained o
ake or examp
expedition to the Asm
in (lsquoill-atedrsquo bec
circumstances afer h
Rockeeller son o N
Rockeeller was a we
and photographer wh
acquire examples o A
established Museum
where he was also a t
recently and very par
Dutch administrator
priests were among
Guinearsquos tribes becautraditions associated
headhunting While
abandoned by m
culture was still thriv
the interests o missi
anthropologists ndash all
acilitating Rockeell
what was seen by him
the spectacular canoe
array o shields cere
out or bargaining ndash w
cameras ( page )In
ethnographic value c
terms o the importa
relationships Wester
rom prestigious art
superpowers were cle
Advertisement lsquoYour native
servantrsquo Pacific Islands
Monthly February 1951
This advertisement from a 1951
issue of Pacific Islands Monthly
reveals racial hierarchies and
colonial social norms still in
place after the Second World
War ndash though not for much
longer Published between
1931 and 2000 the regional
magazine reflected the
transformation of political and
ideological attitudes during the
decolonization era
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 623
V
O
I C
E
D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T U
relationships were vital to the uture o Asmat culture
Nonetheless tropes o the lsquolastrsquo and the lsquovanishingrsquo
were indomitable and widely recycled in documentary
films illustrated magazines television eatures
newspaper articles and so on
Te counterpart to this lament or lost authenticity
in the immediate post-war decades was the
prolieration o tourist art and Oceanic kitsch As
discussed in the previous chapter the presence o
hundreds o thousands o soldiers in the Pacific duringthe Second World War created a lucrative t rade in
arteacts and souvenirs ndash lsquoersatz curiosrsquo as one writer
called them10 Te impact o that exchange reverberates
in the post-war popularization o Oceanic art within
the visual culture o the American leisure industry
Hotels motels restaurant chains and cocktail lounges
with names like lsquorader Vicsrsquo lsquoiki Bobsrsquo and lsquoAloha
Joesrsquo multiplied across the American suburban
landscape in the s and s Teir decor schemes
and advertising graphics appropriated Oceanic art
orms rom art books and exhibition catalogues Masks
and figurines became lounge ornaments while
entertainment shows mimicked cannibals headhunters
and hula dancers in a vast burlesque o Leacutevi-Straussrsquos
historical lament11 Although the genre has its charms
the translation o god figures and ritual sacra into
paperweights and saltshakers represents at its urthest
above left
Dr Adrian Gerbrands
Assistant Director of
the Rijksmuseum voor
Volkenkunde in Leiden
assists Michael Rockefeller
in making a selection of
Asmat shields for the
Museum of Primitive Art
in New York 1961
above right
Barney Westrsquos lsquoTiki Junctionrsquo
Sausalito California c 1968
Ersatz copies of Oceanic art
were made for sale to decorate
motel grounds bar rooms
home gardens and the like
This was part of a post-war
fad for tribal styles and there
was little concern for issues of
authenticity or cultural property
lsquo W H Y D I D M Y P E O P L E A B A N D O N T H E I R F E S T I V A L S rsquo
When the Hevehe masks finally came out of the eravo they danced in
the village for a month In the end the spirits had to be driven back into
the spirit world after staying with us for so long This was accomplished
ceremonially by the slaying of the Hevehe in which a young man was
selected to shoot an arrow at the leader of the masks and lsquokillrsquo it After
that the masks are ceremonially burned and the ashes and all other
remains from the Hevehe festival are thrown into the sea where the great
spirit of all Hevehes resides who will swallow them up
Unfortunately this ceremony was discontinued just before the war and
even the Kovave itself was abandoned some t wenty-five years ago My
own Kovave initiation was the one before the last
Why did my people abandon their festivals The missionaries got a lot of
the blame It is true of course that they did not like the initiation rites and
rather tended to discourage them But at that time their influence was not
all that great in Orokolo
I believe that taxation was a major factor Even though the tax was only
ten shillings per head at first and one pound later on t he young men had
to go out and earn it for themselves and their fathers So they drifted off
to Kerema and maybe Moresby seeking employment in shops or with
white masters While they were earning the money nobody remained athome to take an active part in the ceremonies Many of them lost interest
when they saw other more lsquorespecta blersquo ways of life
Excerpt from Albert Maori Kiki Kiki Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime
A New Guinea Autobiography Melbourne 1968 i
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 723
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE ABELAM ARE ONE OF THE LARGEST
groups in lowland Papua New Guinea They live
in villages of up to 900 people in the foothills of
the Prince Alexander Mountains north of the
Sepik River The Australian administration first
established a government post in their territory in 1937
re-establishing it in 1948 after the Japanese occupation
Thus it was only from the Second World War that the Abelam
were significantly affected by colonial influence and only after
that time that their art came to the attention of the wider world
The energetic brightly painted carvings and paintings made as
part of the long yam cult displayed on and in the cult houses
have since attracted substantial international interest especially
on the part of museums Whole cult house facades and the
carved and woven displays within them have been collected by
a number of museums the Australian Museum and the British
Museum among them A number of anthropologists notably
Anthony Forge and Diane Losche have worked with Abelam
communities and have been drawn by that engagement into
discussing the anthropology of art to questions about the
meaning and significance of specific designs and images
and into broader questions about the nature of art in those
societies where such a category does not exist
Abelam art is displayed in the village in and in front of
menrsquos cult houses Abelam hamlets are built on ridges the
houses are built around a central plaza the forest behind
them Many hamlets have a cult house which towers over
the domestic houses Houses have an A-frame construction
dependent on a long ridge pole supported close to the
ground at the back of the house and sweeping up at the front
cult-house ridge poles can rear up to 18 metres (59 ft) high
The sides of the house sloping away from the ridge pole to
the ground are at the same time its roof thatched with sago
palm leaves The Abelam see the roof-sides of the house as
being like the folded wings of a bird enclosing the space
withini The facade of the cult house is painted in a range of
reds yellows black and white in designs that often represent
the clan spirits or ngwalndu
The long yam cult focuses on the growing display and
exchange of special yams single straight cylindrical tubers
that are carefully and ritually cultivated to reach lengths of
more than 25 or 3 metres (8ndash10 ft) To be a man of substance
a man must be able to grow such yams as the anthropologist
Phyllis Kaberry observed there is a great deal of identification
between a man and his yam there is also a great deal of
identification between the yam and the supernaturalii Initiation
rituals focused on the long yam cult involve the manufacture
of woven and carved painted figures representing clan spirits
which are displayed inside the house decorated with leaves
flowers and fruit This process of making ndash the production
of yams of carvings and paintings ndash draws man and spirit
together The Abelam see paint as crucial to that process
The Abelam do not think about art but about the power
of images and especially of paint itself All Abelam magical
substances are classed as paint various colours being suitable
for various purposes red and a sort of purple the colours of
the substances used for sorcery and long yams are regarded
as the most powerfuliii For the Abelam painting is a sacred
activity in ritual contexts the paint itself is the medium
through which the benefits of the ceremony are transferred
to the initiates and to the village as a whole Paint is t he
essential magical substance of the yam cult LB
Art of the Ab ela m
Decorated menrsquos house
Abelam tribe Sepik District
New Guinea
Photograph Anthony Forge
1962
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356 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
extreme the radical dissemination o Oceanic art
into mass-produced commodities unredeemed by the
quasi-sanctity o the art museum Te phenomenon
was not confined to the United States It extended into
Oceania as well in towns such as Honolulu Papeete
Apia Rotorua Port Vila Agana and elsewhere
Indigenous artists made carvings and handicrafs or
commercial enterprises overseas and Islanders
provided perormers or entertainment shows in hotels
and tourist parks Te Pacific was also translated into
countless pictorial variations o noble chies sunsetbeaches dusky maidens palm-tree villages and other
clicheacuted variations o the erotic and picturesque ndash a set
o genres produced by a host o travelling artists
amateur painters and Islanders as well As Sima
Urale demonstrates in her documentary film on
the velvet painter Charles McPhee the heyday o
these popular genres corresponded with the twilight
years o the colonial Pacific when its visual stereotype
reigned unchallenged12
Customary arts were also increasingly bound to
tourism and media spectacle From the late s the
Pacific Islands upgraded or built new airfields and
hotels and linked into international airline routes in
order to capitalize on the economic opportunities o
an expanded tourist industry in the looming lsquojet agersquo
In the first Goroka show was staged in the New
Guinea Highlands as a spectacular event eaturing
some ten thousand native perormers assembled or
dances games mock fights and the like dressed in
dazzling displays o traditional costume Although the
show was conceived by the Australian administration
in order to build regional unity across rival tribal
groups its success was inseparable rom the attendance
o hundreds o European visitors lsquowith expensive
cameras exposure meters and tripodshelliptaking movies
or expensive colour stillsrsquo13 In a similar event the
Mount Hagen show also in New Guinea described by
Pacific Islands Monthly as lsquothe greatest native show on
earthrsquo eatured a staggering seventy thousandparticipants and was attended by over a thousand
European visitors including documentary filmmakers
and editors o international magazines like National
Geographic and American Readerrsquos Digest people
flown in on chartered aircraf14 In other words the
Pacific was bound up in what Guy Debord called the
vast lsquospectaculariz ationrsquo o society in the post-war era
dominated by consumer capitalism in which the
image itsel in a variety o media was the primary
object o production
and stereotyped Pac
spectacle but they w
consumers Te Pacifi
magazines and Islan
Wayne and Mickey M
global lsquoculture indus
lsquospectaclersquo by post-wa
turned into society a
the Pacific
Yet the expansio
commercialization opredominant vehicle
a growing anxiety w
particularly among t
movements or politi
the s and s t
over the production
legacy Consider or
o Māori Arts and Cr
Rotorua had been a t
above left
Savea Malietoa
untitled painting nd
Oil on board 65 x 124 cm
(25 5 frasl 8 x 48 7 frasl 8 in) Courtesy
Maina Afamasaga
Oil paintings of village scenes
and tropical sunsets were
and still are commonplace
in many Samoan homes and
businesses One of Samoarsquos
best and most prolific artists
was Savea Malietoa In this
painting he depicts a faletele
(big house) and modern church
in a village setting
below left
Charlie McPhee untitled oil
painting on velvet c 1960
In 1997 Samoan filmmaker
Sima Urale made a film about
velvet painter Charlie McPhee
who had lived a lsquocolourful lifersquo
in the Pacific seeking pleasure
adventure and women A
lsquomockumentaryrsquo and a tribute
the film used this painting by
the artist as the exemplary
lsquoobject of desirersquo for an era
that was passing
Mount Hagen show 1965
Photograph David BealANTA
State Library NSW Sydney
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358 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
nineteenth century eaturing Māori cultural
perormances tours in geothermal parks and souvenirs
or sale It was also where Sir Apirana Ngata established
the School o Māori Arts and Crafs in which
spearheaded the recovery o the art o carving rom
near oblivion and did much to rehabilitate whare
whakairo (carved and decorated meeting houses) and
Māori ceremonies among tribes and sub-tribes in the
s and s16 Te School had waned afer the war
but was re-established by an Act o Parliament in
as the Institute o Māori Arts and Crafs and placed
under the Department o ourism But while theSchool had managed to balance its services to the
tourist industry with the goals o cultural preservation
the Institute ound itsel increasingly dominated by
tourism It became a closed system producing
qualified carvers to produce high-end souvenirs or
a very limited market effectively centred around the
Institute itsel However in a telling shif the Institute
was criticized by other Māori Some Māori modernists
(to be discussed later in the chapter) saw the Institute
as irrelevant and out o date while Māori academic
Hirini Moko Mead elt that its educational unctions
had been compromised by its placement under the
Department o ourism Pointing to the lsquoenced and
raised walk-wayrsquo provided or tourists to lsquolook down
in saety upon the curiosities working at their benchesrsquo
(see page ) Mead concluded lsquoTe trainees and their
instructor are exhibited like prize animals in a zoorsquo17
Such critiques indicated a new assertiveness about the value and meaning o ind igenous art and culture Te
lull was over
Nationhood the Arts and Cultural Revival
Te drive or independence and political
re-empowerment which galvanized the Pacific rom
the s to the s reocused the relevance o art
and the arts in Oceania Above all the prospect o new
nationhood brought about a dramatic resurgence o
customary culture and tradition recoded in national
terms Te ethos o revival was encapsulated by Sir
Apirana Ngata in (the year New Zealand became
ormally independent rom Great Britain) when he
predicted that lsquoa great uture lay ahead o the Pacificrsquo
and admonished Māori to lsquotake a bigger part in the
economic social and commercial lie o New Zealand
and to keep alive their native traditions and bring about
a full revival of Māori culturersquo 18 Ngatarsquos philosophy
o reviving lsquonative traditionsrsquo while embracing the
conditions o modern nationhood would be echoed by
indigenous leaders across the Pacific as decolonization
became a political reality beginning in the s
Te political history o decolonization is complex
and cannot be ully recounted here but a ew salient
points are worth making One is the dramatic nature
o imperial withdrawal rom the Pacific (as rom other
parts o the world) At the end o the Second World
War the entire region was under some orm o direct
imperial or external rule By the end o the simperial governance had largely been dismantled
leaving in its wake a host o new Pacific states Bar
some exceptions most were ully independent nations
or independent lsquoin ree association withrsquo their ormer
colonial power Where independence had not been
achieved or stalled or ormally rejected those
continuing territories nonetheless enjoyed significantly
greater political autonomy than existed in the pre-war
era19 In other words however qualified by the messy
specificities o particular situations decolonization
was part o a concerted process to restructure the
global political social and economic order
(Decolonization in this sense should not be conused
with myriad struggles against colonialism which
certainly made the most o the opportunities o ormal
decolonization but have much older histories and
continue into the present)
A second point is the uneven incomplete andcontradictory character o decolonization in the
Pacific Te possibility o national independence
was undoubtedly the dominant political ambition o
Pacific leaders though it played out differently across
the region and no simple generalization is possible
In territories administered by anglophone powers
(Britain Australia New Zealand and the United
States) independence was generally agreed upon as
the mutually preerred outcome (However this was
not true in all cases American Samoa and Guam
elected to remain territories o the United States and
there were many people ndash in Fiji onga and Austra lian
New Guinea or example ndash who elt independence was
being oisted on them whether they wanted it or not)
Western Samoa got the ball rolling when it became
independent rom New Zealand administration in
An impressive succession o new states ollowed the
Cook Islands in Nauru in onga and Fiji in
Niue in Papua New Guinea in uvalu
and the Solomon Islands in Vanuatu in
the Marshall Islands and the Federated States o
Micronesia in and Belau in Te list testifies
to the supra-national orces driving decolonization
But it also obscures the difficult business o actually
achieving nationhood and the precarious nature o
many o the states thus created It obscures too the
many disputes ndash about the timing o decolonization
the geography o borders the nature o constitutions
and parliamentary structures the continuedexploitation o islands used as naval bases and nuclear
testing sites in the politics o the Cold War etcetera
ndash that complicated and interered with decolonizationrsquos
inexorable outcome
In the French Pacific independence was a much
more contested objective France saw decolonization
differently to the anglophone powers20 While it
granted French citizenship rights and significant
political autonomy to its Pacific territories soon afer
the Second World War it stopped short o ull
independence and generally opposed and even
obstructed political movements in that direction
seeing decolonization rather as transpiring within
the greater rancophone republic Moreover loyalties
to France among local settler lsquodemirsquo and migrant
populations made the indigenous struggle or
independence a matter o intense and sometimes
violent political dispute Only in the c ase o the NewHebrides (Vanuatu) which France had jointly ruled
with Britain since did a French colony become
ully independent Nationhood and independence
were also complicated in the anglophone settler states
o Hawailsquoi New Zealand and Australia where
nineteenth-century colonization and massive settler
migration had reduced indigenous people to minorities
in their own land Indeed the weight o this history
led to the Hawaiian Islands becoming an American
state in In these places settler withdrawal was
impossible and decolonization played out rather as
a struggle or rights recognition return o illegally
expropriated land and social political and economic
re-empowerment
Te contradictory character o decolonization is
also illustrated by the ate o West Papua ormerly
Netherlands New Guinea which ound itsel caught
up in the opportunis
neighbour Indonesia
Afer winning its ind
Indonesia laid claim
part o its national te
quit the colony and h
disputed the legitima
developed between th
s Recognizing th
rantically strugg led
tasks o sel-governm
national flag o West
was raised in the terr
set or independenceIndonesia pressed its
President Sukarno in
rhetoric against the D
War ears to neutrali
Australia and the Un
the rise o communis
to make an enemy o
threatening to take N
and indeed he invade
With little internatio
to war or the colony
control o West Papu
United Nations ndash to I
renamed it West Iria
to this affair Indones
on sel-government i
circumstances in whi
The Morning Star flag of
independent West Papua
now illegal under
Indonesian law
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 323
P A R T T H R E E I S L A N D M E L A N E S I A 1 7 0 0 ndash 19 4 0
983089983094983088 P L A CE WA R F A R E A N D T R A D E 983089983095983088983088ndash983089983096983092983088 Lissant Bolton
Voice lsquoTe village wakes earlyrsquo 983089983094983091 bull Voice lsquoTe eel is tabu to usrsquo 983089983094983092 bull Landscape and Place 983089983094983093 bull Warare 983089983095983089 bull
rade 983089983095983094 bull Feature Pigs as Art 983089983096983090
983089983096983094 I N CU R S I O N S L O S S CO N T I N U I T Y A N D A D A P T A T I O N 983089983096983092983088ndash983089983097983088983088 Lissant Bolton
Te Potential o New Materials 983089983096983095 bull Feature Creating or Collectors in the Admiralty Islands 983089983097983088 bull Te
Continuity o Ritual 983089983097983090 bull Voice lsquoSuddenly there is a rifle shotrsquo 983089983097983091 bull Depicting Europeans 983090983088983089 bull Feature Death
and Mourning 983090983088983090 bull Te Art in Dancing 983090983088983092 bull Voice lsquoMany people diedrsquo 983090983088983093 bull Feature Humour and History 983090983088983094
bull Political Power and Status 983090983089983090
983090983089983096 T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S 983089983096983097983088ndash983089983097983092983088 Lissant Bolton
Voice lsquoMaltantanu was a very high-ranking manrsquo 983090983090983089 bull Negotiating Christianity 983090983090983090 bull Clothing and
ransormation bull Food and Feasting 983090983090983095 bull Feature the Kalikongu Feast rough 983090983091983088 bull Te Art o Everyday
Lie 983090983091983090 bull Describing Island Melanesia 983090983091983093 bull Objects o Value 983090983091983096
P A R T F O U R E A S T E R N A N D N O R T H E R N O C E A N I A 1 7 0 0ndash 1 94 0 983090983092983092 P O L I T I CA L T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S A R T A N D P O WE R 983089983095983088983088ndash983089983096983088983088
Deidre Brown
Te Role o lsquoOro in ahitian Unification 983090983092983093 bull Te Role o Feathered Objects in Hawaiian Unification 983090983093983089 bull
Feature the Birdman Cult 983090983093983090 bull Voice O Ku Your Many Forms 983090983093983092 bull Feature Marquesan Style 983090983094983090 bull extiles
and Stone Money o the Yapese Empire 983090983094983092 bull Voice lsquoTis man is about to come under your mantlersquo 983090983094983094
983090983095983088 E U R O P E A N I N CU R S I O N S 983089983095983094983093ndash983089983096983096983088 Nicholas Tomas
Contact and Commerce 983090983095983089 bull Feature Arsquoa Te Fractal God 983090983096983088 bull Conversion Iconoclasm and Innovation 983090983096983090 bull
Voice lsquoTe chie then ordered his people to make a large firersquo 983090983096983091 bull Te Mana o Script 983090983097983089 bull Voice lsquoImmediatelyafer ood trading beganrsquo 983090983097983092 bull Gain and Loss 983090983097983093 bull Feature lsquoKiribati Bobrsquo 983090983097983094
983090983097983096 C O L O N I A L S T Y L E S A R C H I T E C T U R E A N D I N D I G E N O U S M O D E R N I T Y Deidre Brown
echnological Appropriation 983090983097983097 bull Te Influence o Christianity 983091983088983091 bull Naturalism and Figurative Painting 983091983088983094 bull
Appropriating the West 983091983089983089 bull Feature Gauguinrsquos House o Pleasure 983091983089983092 bull Modernity and raditionalization 983091983089983094bull
Voice o the Minister o Maori Affai rs 983091983089983096 bull Feature Fabricating Society 983091983090983090
P A R T F I V E A R T W A R A N D T H E E N D O F E M P I R E 1940ndash89
983091983090983094 WA R A N D V I S U A L C U L T U R E 983089983097983091983097ndash983092983093 Sean Mallon
Influx Disruption Creation and Enterprise 983091983090983095 bull Voice Ersatz Curios A Flourishing rade in Polynesia 983091983091983090 bull
Cross-Cultural Exchange 983091983091983091 bull Voice War Songs 983091983091983093 bull Military raditions and Iconographies 983091983092983089 bull
Memories Ruins and New Beginnings 983091983092983091 bull Feature War Art 983091983092983092
983091983092983096 D E CO L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N CE A N D CU L T U R
Peter Brunt
Te Lull Kitsch Spectacle and the Lament or Lost Authenticity 983091983093983088 bull Voice lsquoW
estivalsrsquo 983091983093983090 bull Feature Art o the Abelam 983091983093983092 bull Nationhood the Arts and Cult
in the Pacific 983091983094983088 bull Voice lsquoBut what is also vitalhelliprsquo 983091983094983093 bull Modernism and the lsquoNe
should be or a new Oceaniarsquo 983091983095983091bull Feature Ralph Hotere 983091983095983094 bull owards the Pos
983091983096983092 T O U R I S T A R T A N D I T S M A R K E T S 983089983097983092983093ndash983096983097 Sean Mallon
Inrastructure Image and Opportunity 983091983096983094 bull Voice lsquoWhere shall we go this wee
Maori 983091983097983088 bull Fairs Festivals and Museums 983091983097983090 bull ourist Art Development and t
Authentic 983092983088983089 bull Voice lsquoFrom a native daughterrsquo 983092983088983091 bull Indigenous Agency and C
Tours
and the Postcolonial urn 983092983088983094
P A R T S I X A R T I N O C E A N I A N O W 19 89 ndash2
983092983089983088 C O N T E M P O R A R Y P A C I F I C A R T A N D I T S G L O B A L I
Te Space and ime o Contemporary Pacific Art 983092983089983090bull Creating Contemporary
Feature Te Asia Pacific riennial o Contemporary Art 983092983089983094 bull Contemporary Pa
Representation 983092983090983090 bull Feature Gordon Walters and the Cultural Appropriation D
a seabirdrsquo 983092983091983088 bull Contemporary Pacific Art in the Global Art World 983092983091983090 bull Voice
983092983092983088 U R B A N A R T A N D P O P U L A R C U L T U R E Sean Mallon
Protest Power and Politics 983092983092983090 bull Feature Carrying Cultures 983092983092983094 bull Street Culture
erritory 983092983092983096 bull Voice Ea 983092983092983097 bull Disjuncture Continuity and ransnational Conn
as Wearable Art 983092983094983088 bull Pacific Art ransnational Communities Urban Contexts
983092983094983094 C O N T I N U I T Y A N D C H A N G E I N C U S T O M A R Y A R T
Motivations or Change in Customary Art 983092983094983095 bull Feature John Hovell and the Ar
Revival 983092983095983091 bull Material Matters 983092983095983093 bull Culture as Place Culture as Identity 983092983096983089bull C
bull Feature Spiderweb and Vine Te Art o Oumlmie 983092983096983092 bull Voice lsquoWe started calling
Jaki-ed Marshall Islands extiles 983092983097983088 bull Feature Collaborating with the Contemp
983092983097983096 A F T E R W O R D Peter Brunt
Maps
Notes
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Picture Credits
About the Authors
Index
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 423
In the Museum o Modern Art in New York Citymounted a watershed exhibition entitled lsquoArts o the
South Seasrsquo Te topicality o the exhibition reflected
the remarkable prominence o the Pacific Islands in
American consciousness in the afermath o the Second
World War For the Pacific had been a major theatre o
American participation in that conflict with hundreds
o thousands o soldiers stationed in the south Pacific
and numerous islands the scene o fierce battles in the
long campaign to drive back the Japanese Te
encounter between Americans and Islanders deeply
affected their perceptions o each other Te awesome
might o the American military complex transormed
the consciousness o many Islanders in places igniting
imaginings o a specifically American uture filled
with the promise o unlimited wealth material goods
and powers over nature1 Conversely the American
perception o the Pacific was equally ecstatic inspiring
popular musicals sucSouth Pacific which
and exhibitions such
Mounted the yea
the United Nations G
oversee the dismantl
ollowing decades th
o art in Oceania on t
political uture Te s
rom ethnographic c
museums which it a
artrsquo emphasizing the
selection lighting an
supplemented the aes
with a scholarly catal
and artistic tradition
Oceanic art was not n
century European m
Peter Brunt
D E C O L O N I Z A I O N I N D E P E N
A N D C U L U R A L R E V I V A L 1 9 4
opposite
Exhibition catalogue cover
lsquoArts of the South Seasrsquo
designer Ralph Linton
Museum of Modern Art
New York 1946
copy 2010 The Museum of
Modern Art New York
Scala Florence
below left
Installation view of the
exhibition lsquoArts of the South
Seasrsquo Museum of Modern
Art New York 1946
copy 2010 The Museum of
Modern Art New York
Scala Florence
below right
Album cover for a recording
of the Broadway musical
South Pacific
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 523
350 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
collected emulated written about and admired it
within the category o lsquoprimitive artrsquo What was new
according to art historian Robert Goldwater was the
broad public acceptance o such objects as art
occurring in Western metropolises in the mid-
twentieth century in large part through the sanction
o institutions such as the Museum o Modern Art3
But in view o the showrsquos historical moment the
significance o the recategorization was ambiguous
On the one hand it signalled the liberality o
modernist aesthetics drawing objects previously
regarded as curiosities idols or ethnographicdocuments into a discourse about the universality o
artistic orm and eeling Teir new status challenged
centuries o racial prejudice about art as an exclusive
index o European superiority On the other hand
becoming art carried more problematic implications
particularly or the cultures whose art was on view
As Goldwater pointed out writing in the lsquotrendrsquo
towards lsquocomplete aesthetic acceptancersquo coincided
with the process o global decolonization It was
lsquohastened by the establishment o the ormer colonies
as independent nations and the transormation o their
traditional cultures under the impact o modern
technology and economy Te result was that with only
a ew exceptions the primitive arts became arts o the
past (in some cases the very recent past) and thus lost
part o their previous unction as documentation o
contemporary primitive culturesrsquo4 In other words
becoming art in the modern sense was allied to anarrative o modern nationhood in which lsquotraditional
culturesrsquo and lsquoprimitiversquo lie orms were doomed
to obsolescence
Behind Goldwaterrsquos statement is a undamental
modernist narrative about the ate o art in modernity
encapsulated in the nineteenth-century philosopher
G W F Hegelrsquos amous dictum that lsquoart considered
in its highest vocation is and remains or us a thing
o the pastrsquo5 Written in the wake o the French
Revolution the lsquousrsquo Hegel reers to are Western
Europeans caught up in the turbulence o their own
transition into modern nationhood more than a
hundred years earlier Te dictum summarized what
he saw as the destiny o art in the modern world in
which the power o art to give lsquosensuous immediacyrsquo
to human worlds (its lsquohighest vocationrsquo) is eclipsed by
the statersquos rational secular legalistic and bureaucratic
character Art is rendered obsolete and marginal to
the operations o the mo dern state However it is
revalorized as something essentially aesthetic and
historical Hence the birth o the two dominant
institutions o art in Western modernity the art
museum and art history Moreover the continuance
o art in Western modernity was premised on this
sense o its historical nature and marginal social
status ndash as the history o Western modernism and the
avant-garde with their rapid succession o lsquoismsrsquo and
lsquomovementsrsquo has shown
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo poised on the thresholdo global decolonization was thus a deeply loaded
exhibition Its objects gathered rom museums pointed
to the impact o colonialism and the imperial order on
Pacific societies while its occasion pointed
enigmatically to a postcolonial uture It begged the
question o the uture o the soc ieties that its artworks
displayed For Goldwater they must give way to t he
irresistible transormations entailed in the making
o modern nation states and the spread o lsquouniversal
civilizationrsquo summed up by Paul Ricoeur in as
the ineluctable orces o democratization capitalist
economics and science and technology 6 In this context
the artistic traditions o these societies were ated to
become arts o the past a s many already had But the
history o decolonization in the Pacific would prove
less punctual more contradictory and ambiguous
than Goldwaterrsquos stoic aestheticism allowed
Te Lull Kitsch Spectacle and theLament for Lost Authenticity
Te first decade or so afer the Second World War
was marked by a kind o lull in the Pacific a pause
between the demise o the imperial system and the
political restructuring that dominated the region rom
the s to the s Tis was a period o anticipation
but uncertainty Many developments clearly pointed to
a postcolonial uture Te lsquogreat powersrsquo had signalled
their intention to reorder the world system at various
summits afer the war Colonies in Arica and South
Asia were already crumbling More locally indentured
labour laws were lifed in Australian New Guinea
France granted greater political autonomy to its Pacific
territories independence parties ormed in ahiti and
New Caledonia preparations or independence were
under way in Western Samoa and so on Nonetheless
the uture o imperial rule was still unclear Pre-war
governance structures were restored in many places
afer the war Racial ideologies o white superiority
and right to rule remained in place (and would not
definitively crumble until the s or later) Settlers in
colonial towns expected reorm but not necessarily thecomplete dismantling o the imperial order And in
places where lsquodevelopmentrsquo was minimal ndash in much
o New Guinea and the New Hebrides or example ndash
indigenous sel-government seemed a long way off
In this liminal state the subject o art in the
Pacific was largely inchoate dispersed in a variety o
aesthetically ambiguous contexts One o these lay
at the intersection between art museums cultural
anthropology the tribal art trade and an uncounted
number o small hamlets and villages particularly
in New Guinea and island Melanesia which still
produced or possessed the lsquoauthenticrsquo or lsquoquality piecesrsquo
that primitive art collectors and museums desired
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo exemplified this intersection
While this nexus o activities was certainly continuous
with practices beore the war the post-war period was
marked by a growing anxiety about the shrinking
opportunities to colle
the prolieration o a
the disruptive effects
commercial enterpri
kind o societies that
lsquovanishing primitiversquo
European collecting
Te anthropologist C
this ear in his popul
published in in w
anthropologyrsquos quest
given the pervasiventhroughout the world
mounted collecting e
to acquire ndash lsquoBeore I
it ndash what remained o
ake or examp
expedition to the Asm
in (lsquoill-atedrsquo bec
circumstances afer h
Rockeeller son o N
Rockeeller was a we
and photographer wh
acquire examples o A
established Museum
where he was also a t
recently and very par
Dutch administrator
priests were among
Guinearsquos tribes becautraditions associated
headhunting While
abandoned by m
culture was still thriv
the interests o missi
anthropologists ndash all
acilitating Rockeell
what was seen by him
the spectacular canoe
array o shields cere
out or bargaining ndash w
cameras ( page )In
ethnographic value c
terms o the importa
relationships Wester
rom prestigious art
superpowers were cle
Advertisement lsquoYour native
servantrsquo Pacific Islands
Monthly February 1951
This advertisement from a 1951
issue of Pacific Islands Monthly
reveals racial hierarchies and
colonial social norms still in
place after the Second World
War ndash though not for much
longer Published between
1931 and 2000 the regional
magazine reflected the
transformation of political and
ideological attitudes during the
decolonization era
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 623
V
O
I C
E
D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T U
relationships were vital to the uture o Asmat culture
Nonetheless tropes o the lsquolastrsquo and the lsquovanishingrsquo
were indomitable and widely recycled in documentary
films illustrated magazines television eatures
newspaper articles and so on
Te counterpart to this lament or lost authenticity
in the immediate post-war decades was the
prolieration o tourist art and Oceanic kitsch As
discussed in the previous chapter the presence o
hundreds o thousands o soldiers in the Pacific duringthe Second World War created a lucrative t rade in
arteacts and souvenirs ndash lsquoersatz curiosrsquo as one writer
called them10 Te impact o that exchange reverberates
in the post-war popularization o Oceanic art within
the visual culture o the American leisure industry
Hotels motels restaurant chains and cocktail lounges
with names like lsquorader Vicsrsquo lsquoiki Bobsrsquo and lsquoAloha
Joesrsquo multiplied across the American suburban
landscape in the s and s Teir decor schemes
and advertising graphics appropriated Oceanic art
orms rom art books and exhibition catalogues Masks
and figurines became lounge ornaments while
entertainment shows mimicked cannibals headhunters
and hula dancers in a vast burlesque o Leacutevi-Straussrsquos
historical lament11 Although the genre has its charms
the translation o god figures and ritual sacra into
paperweights and saltshakers represents at its urthest
above left
Dr Adrian Gerbrands
Assistant Director of
the Rijksmuseum voor
Volkenkunde in Leiden
assists Michael Rockefeller
in making a selection of
Asmat shields for the
Museum of Primitive Art
in New York 1961
above right
Barney Westrsquos lsquoTiki Junctionrsquo
Sausalito California c 1968
Ersatz copies of Oceanic art
were made for sale to decorate
motel grounds bar rooms
home gardens and the like
This was part of a post-war
fad for tribal styles and there
was little concern for issues of
authenticity or cultural property
lsquo W H Y D I D M Y P E O P L E A B A N D O N T H E I R F E S T I V A L S rsquo
When the Hevehe masks finally came out of the eravo they danced in
the village for a month In the end the spirits had to be driven back into
the spirit world after staying with us for so long This was accomplished
ceremonially by the slaying of the Hevehe in which a young man was
selected to shoot an arrow at the leader of the masks and lsquokillrsquo it After
that the masks are ceremonially burned and the ashes and all other
remains from the Hevehe festival are thrown into the sea where the great
spirit of all Hevehes resides who will swallow them up
Unfortunately this ceremony was discontinued just before the war and
even the Kovave itself was abandoned some t wenty-five years ago My
own Kovave initiation was the one before the last
Why did my people abandon their festivals The missionaries got a lot of
the blame It is true of course that they did not like the initiation rites and
rather tended to discourage them But at that time their influence was not
all that great in Orokolo
I believe that taxation was a major factor Even though the tax was only
ten shillings per head at first and one pound later on t he young men had
to go out and earn it for themselves and their fathers So they drifted off
to Kerema and maybe Moresby seeking employment in shops or with
white masters While they were earning the money nobody remained athome to take an active part in the ceremonies Many of them lost interest
when they saw other more lsquorespecta blersquo ways of life
Excerpt from Albert Maori Kiki Kiki Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime
A New Guinea Autobiography Melbourne 1968 i
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 723
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE ABELAM ARE ONE OF THE LARGEST
groups in lowland Papua New Guinea They live
in villages of up to 900 people in the foothills of
the Prince Alexander Mountains north of the
Sepik River The Australian administration first
established a government post in their territory in 1937
re-establishing it in 1948 after the Japanese occupation
Thus it was only from the Second World War that the Abelam
were significantly affected by colonial influence and only after
that time that their art came to the attention of the wider world
The energetic brightly painted carvings and paintings made as
part of the long yam cult displayed on and in the cult houses
have since attracted substantial international interest especially
on the part of museums Whole cult house facades and the
carved and woven displays within them have been collected by
a number of museums the Australian Museum and the British
Museum among them A number of anthropologists notably
Anthony Forge and Diane Losche have worked with Abelam
communities and have been drawn by that engagement into
discussing the anthropology of art to questions about the
meaning and significance of specific designs and images
and into broader questions about the nature of art in those
societies where such a category does not exist
Abelam art is displayed in the village in and in front of
menrsquos cult houses Abelam hamlets are built on ridges the
houses are built around a central plaza the forest behind
them Many hamlets have a cult house which towers over
the domestic houses Houses have an A-frame construction
dependent on a long ridge pole supported close to the
ground at the back of the house and sweeping up at the front
cult-house ridge poles can rear up to 18 metres (59 ft) high
The sides of the house sloping away from the ridge pole to
the ground are at the same time its roof thatched with sago
palm leaves The Abelam see the roof-sides of the house as
being like the folded wings of a bird enclosing the space
withini The facade of the cult house is painted in a range of
reds yellows black and white in designs that often represent
the clan spirits or ngwalndu
The long yam cult focuses on the growing display and
exchange of special yams single straight cylindrical tubers
that are carefully and ritually cultivated to reach lengths of
more than 25 or 3 metres (8ndash10 ft) To be a man of substance
a man must be able to grow such yams as the anthropologist
Phyllis Kaberry observed there is a great deal of identification
between a man and his yam there is also a great deal of
identification between the yam and the supernaturalii Initiation
rituals focused on the long yam cult involve the manufacture
of woven and carved painted figures representing clan spirits
which are displayed inside the house decorated with leaves
flowers and fruit This process of making ndash the production
of yams of carvings and paintings ndash draws man and spirit
together The Abelam see paint as crucial to that process
The Abelam do not think about art but about the power
of images and especially of paint itself All Abelam magical
substances are classed as paint various colours being suitable
for various purposes red and a sort of purple the colours of
the substances used for sorcery and long yams are regarded
as the most powerfuliii For the Abelam painting is a sacred
activity in ritual contexts the paint itself is the medium
through which the benefits of the ceremony are transferred
to the initiates and to the village as a whole Paint is t he
essential magical substance of the yam cult LB
Art of the Ab ela m
Decorated menrsquos house
Abelam tribe Sepik District
New Guinea
Photograph Anthony Forge
1962
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356 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
extreme the radical dissemination o Oceanic art
into mass-produced commodities unredeemed by the
quasi-sanctity o the art museum Te phenomenon
was not confined to the United States It extended into
Oceania as well in towns such as Honolulu Papeete
Apia Rotorua Port Vila Agana and elsewhere
Indigenous artists made carvings and handicrafs or
commercial enterprises overseas and Islanders
provided perormers or entertainment shows in hotels
and tourist parks Te Pacific was also translated into
countless pictorial variations o noble chies sunsetbeaches dusky maidens palm-tree villages and other
clicheacuted variations o the erotic and picturesque ndash a set
o genres produced by a host o travelling artists
amateur painters and Islanders as well As Sima
Urale demonstrates in her documentary film on
the velvet painter Charles McPhee the heyday o
these popular genres corresponded with the twilight
years o the colonial Pacific when its visual stereotype
reigned unchallenged12
Customary arts were also increasingly bound to
tourism and media spectacle From the late s the
Pacific Islands upgraded or built new airfields and
hotels and linked into international airline routes in
order to capitalize on the economic opportunities o
an expanded tourist industry in the looming lsquojet agersquo
In the first Goroka show was staged in the New
Guinea Highlands as a spectacular event eaturing
some ten thousand native perormers assembled or
dances games mock fights and the like dressed in
dazzling displays o traditional costume Although the
show was conceived by the Australian administration
in order to build regional unity across rival tribal
groups its success was inseparable rom the attendance
o hundreds o European visitors lsquowith expensive
cameras exposure meters and tripodshelliptaking movies
or expensive colour stillsrsquo13 In a similar event the
Mount Hagen show also in New Guinea described by
Pacific Islands Monthly as lsquothe greatest native show on
earthrsquo eatured a staggering seventy thousandparticipants and was attended by over a thousand
European visitors including documentary filmmakers
and editors o international magazines like National
Geographic and American Readerrsquos Digest people
flown in on chartered aircraf14 In other words the
Pacific was bound up in what Guy Debord called the
vast lsquospectaculariz ationrsquo o society in the post-war era
dominated by consumer capitalism in which the
image itsel in a variety o media was the primary
object o production
and stereotyped Pac
spectacle but they w
consumers Te Pacifi
magazines and Islan
Wayne and Mickey M
global lsquoculture indus
lsquospectaclersquo by post-wa
turned into society a
the Pacific
Yet the expansio
commercialization opredominant vehicle
a growing anxiety w
particularly among t
movements or politi
the s and s t
over the production
legacy Consider or
o Māori Arts and Cr
Rotorua had been a t
above left
Savea Malietoa
untitled painting nd
Oil on board 65 x 124 cm
(25 5 frasl 8 x 48 7 frasl 8 in) Courtesy
Maina Afamasaga
Oil paintings of village scenes
and tropical sunsets were
and still are commonplace
in many Samoan homes and
businesses One of Samoarsquos
best and most prolific artists
was Savea Malietoa In this
painting he depicts a faletele
(big house) and modern church
in a village setting
below left
Charlie McPhee untitled oil
painting on velvet c 1960
In 1997 Samoan filmmaker
Sima Urale made a film about
velvet painter Charlie McPhee
who had lived a lsquocolourful lifersquo
in the Pacific seeking pleasure
adventure and women A
lsquomockumentaryrsquo and a tribute
the film used this painting by
the artist as the exemplary
lsquoobject of desirersquo for an era
that was passing
Mount Hagen show 1965
Photograph David BealANTA
State Library NSW Sydney
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358 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
nineteenth century eaturing Māori cultural
perormances tours in geothermal parks and souvenirs
or sale It was also where Sir Apirana Ngata established
the School o Māori Arts and Crafs in which
spearheaded the recovery o the art o carving rom
near oblivion and did much to rehabilitate whare
whakairo (carved and decorated meeting houses) and
Māori ceremonies among tribes and sub-tribes in the
s and s16 Te School had waned afer the war
but was re-established by an Act o Parliament in
as the Institute o Māori Arts and Crafs and placed
under the Department o ourism But while theSchool had managed to balance its services to the
tourist industry with the goals o cultural preservation
the Institute ound itsel increasingly dominated by
tourism It became a closed system producing
qualified carvers to produce high-end souvenirs or
a very limited market effectively centred around the
Institute itsel However in a telling shif the Institute
was criticized by other Māori Some Māori modernists
(to be discussed later in the chapter) saw the Institute
as irrelevant and out o date while Māori academic
Hirini Moko Mead elt that its educational unctions
had been compromised by its placement under the
Department o ourism Pointing to the lsquoenced and
raised walk-wayrsquo provided or tourists to lsquolook down
in saety upon the curiosities working at their benchesrsquo
(see page ) Mead concluded lsquoTe trainees and their
instructor are exhibited like prize animals in a zoorsquo17
Such critiques indicated a new assertiveness about the value and meaning o ind igenous art and culture Te
lull was over
Nationhood the Arts and Cultural Revival
Te drive or independence and political
re-empowerment which galvanized the Pacific rom
the s to the s reocused the relevance o art
and the arts in Oceania Above all the prospect o new
nationhood brought about a dramatic resurgence o
customary culture and tradition recoded in national
terms Te ethos o revival was encapsulated by Sir
Apirana Ngata in (the year New Zealand became
ormally independent rom Great Britain) when he
predicted that lsquoa great uture lay ahead o the Pacificrsquo
and admonished Māori to lsquotake a bigger part in the
economic social and commercial lie o New Zealand
and to keep alive their native traditions and bring about
a full revival of Māori culturersquo 18 Ngatarsquos philosophy
o reviving lsquonative traditionsrsquo while embracing the
conditions o modern nationhood would be echoed by
indigenous leaders across the Pacific as decolonization
became a political reality beginning in the s
Te political history o decolonization is complex
and cannot be ully recounted here but a ew salient
points are worth making One is the dramatic nature
o imperial withdrawal rom the Pacific (as rom other
parts o the world) At the end o the Second World
War the entire region was under some orm o direct
imperial or external rule By the end o the simperial governance had largely been dismantled
leaving in its wake a host o new Pacific states Bar
some exceptions most were ully independent nations
or independent lsquoin ree association withrsquo their ormer
colonial power Where independence had not been
achieved or stalled or ormally rejected those
continuing territories nonetheless enjoyed significantly
greater political autonomy than existed in the pre-war
era19 In other words however qualified by the messy
specificities o particular situations decolonization
was part o a concerted process to restructure the
global political social and economic order
(Decolonization in this sense should not be conused
with myriad struggles against colonialism which
certainly made the most o the opportunities o ormal
decolonization but have much older histories and
continue into the present)
A second point is the uneven incomplete andcontradictory character o decolonization in the
Pacific Te possibility o national independence
was undoubtedly the dominant political ambition o
Pacific leaders though it played out differently across
the region and no simple generalization is possible
In territories administered by anglophone powers
(Britain Australia New Zealand and the United
States) independence was generally agreed upon as
the mutually preerred outcome (However this was
not true in all cases American Samoa and Guam
elected to remain territories o the United States and
there were many people ndash in Fiji onga and Austra lian
New Guinea or example ndash who elt independence was
being oisted on them whether they wanted it or not)
Western Samoa got the ball rolling when it became
independent rom New Zealand administration in
An impressive succession o new states ollowed the
Cook Islands in Nauru in onga and Fiji in
Niue in Papua New Guinea in uvalu
and the Solomon Islands in Vanuatu in
the Marshall Islands and the Federated States o
Micronesia in and Belau in Te list testifies
to the supra-national orces driving decolonization
But it also obscures the difficult business o actually
achieving nationhood and the precarious nature o
many o the states thus created It obscures too the
many disputes ndash about the timing o decolonization
the geography o borders the nature o constitutions
and parliamentary structures the continuedexploitation o islands used as naval bases and nuclear
testing sites in the politics o the Cold War etcetera
ndash that complicated and interered with decolonizationrsquos
inexorable outcome
In the French Pacific independence was a much
more contested objective France saw decolonization
differently to the anglophone powers20 While it
granted French citizenship rights and significant
political autonomy to its Pacific territories soon afer
the Second World War it stopped short o ull
independence and generally opposed and even
obstructed political movements in that direction
seeing decolonization rather as transpiring within
the greater rancophone republic Moreover loyalties
to France among local settler lsquodemirsquo and migrant
populations made the indigenous struggle or
independence a matter o intense and sometimes
violent political dispute Only in the c ase o the NewHebrides (Vanuatu) which France had jointly ruled
with Britain since did a French colony become
ully independent Nationhood and independence
were also complicated in the anglophone settler states
o Hawailsquoi New Zealand and Australia where
nineteenth-century colonization and massive settler
migration had reduced indigenous people to minorities
in their own land Indeed the weight o this history
led to the Hawaiian Islands becoming an American
state in In these places settler withdrawal was
impossible and decolonization played out rather as
a struggle or rights recognition return o illegally
expropriated land and social political and economic
re-empowerment
Te contradictory character o decolonization is
also illustrated by the ate o West Papua ormerly
Netherlands New Guinea which ound itsel caught
up in the opportunis
neighbour Indonesia
Afer winning its ind
Indonesia laid claim
part o its national te
quit the colony and h
disputed the legitima
developed between th
s Recognizing th
rantically strugg led
tasks o sel-governm
national flag o West
was raised in the terr
set or independenceIndonesia pressed its
President Sukarno in
rhetoric against the D
War ears to neutrali
Australia and the Un
the rise o communis
to make an enemy o
threatening to take N
and indeed he invade
With little internatio
to war or the colony
control o West Papu
United Nations ndash to I
renamed it West Iria
to this affair Indones
on sel-government i
circumstances in whi
The Morning Star flag of
independent West Papua
now illegal under
Indonesian law
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
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In the Museum o Modern Art in New York Citymounted a watershed exhibition entitled lsquoArts o the
South Seasrsquo Te topicality o the exhibition reflected
the remarkable prominence o the Pacific Islands in
American consciousness in the afermath o the Second
World War For the Pacific had been a major theatre o
American participation in that conflict with hundreds
o thousands o soldiers stationed in the south Pacific
and numerous islands the scene o fierce battles in the
long campaign to drive back the Japanese Te
encounter between Americans and Islanders deeply
affected their perceptions o each other Te awesome
might o the American military complex transormed
the consciousness o many Islanders in places igniting
imaginings o a specifically American uture filled
with the promise o unlimited wealth material goods
and powers over nature1 Conversely the American
perception o the Pacific was equally ecstatic inspiring
popular musicals sucSouth Pacific which
and exhibitions such
Mounted the yea
the United Nations G
oversee the dismantl
ollowing decades th
o art in Oceania on t
political uture Te s
rom ethnographic c
museums which it a
artrsquo emphasizing the
selection lighting an
supplemented the aes
with a scholarly catal
and artistic tradition
Oceanic art was not n
century European m
Peter Brunt
D E C O L O N I Z A I O N I N D E P E N
A N D C U L U R A L R E V I V A L 1 9 4
opposite
Exhibition catalogue cover
lsquoArts of the South Seasrsquo
designer Ralph Linton
Museum of Modern Art
New York 1946
copy 2010 The Museum of
Modern Art New York
Scala Florence
below left
Installation view of the
exhibition lsquoArts of the South
Seasrsquo Museum of Modern
Art New York 1946
copy 2010 The Museum of
Modern Art New York
Scala Florence
below right
Album cover for a recording
of the Broadway musical
South Pacific
7242019 Art in Oceania
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350 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
collected emulated written about and admired it
within the category o lsquoprimitive artrsquo What was new
according to art historian Robert Goldwater was the
broad public acceptance o such objects as art
occurring in Western metropolises in the mid-
twentieth century in large part through the sanction
o institutions such as the Museum o Modern Art3
But in view o the showrsquos historical moment the
significance o the recategorization was ambiguous
On the one hand it signalled the liberality o
modernist aesthetics drawing objects previously
regarded as curiosities idols or ethnographicdocuments into a discourse about the universality o
artistic orm and eeling Teir new status challenged
centuries o racial prejudice about art as an exclusive
index o European superiority On the other hand
becoming art carried more problematic implications
particularly or the cultures whose art was on view
As Goldwater pointed out writing in the lsquotrendrsquo
towards lsquocomplete aesthetic acceptancersquo coincided
with the process o global decolonization It was
lsquohastened by the establishment o the ormer colonies
as independent nations and the transormation o their
traditional cultures under the impact o modern
technology and economy Te result was that with only
a ew exceptions the primitive arts became arts o the
past (in some cases the very recent past) and thus lost
part o their previous unction as documentation o
contemporary primitive culturesrsquo4 In other words
becoming art in the modern sense was allied to anarrative o modern nationhood in which lsquotraditional
culturesrsquo and lsquoprimitiversquo lie orms were doomed
to obsolescence
Behind Goldwaterrsquos statement is a undamental
modernist narrative about the ate o art in modernity
encapsulated in the nineteenth-century philosopher
G W F Hegelrsquos amous dictum that lsquoart considered
in its highest vocation is and remains or us a thing
o the pastrsquo5 Written in the wake o the French
Revolution the lsquousrsquo Hegel reers to are Western
Europeans caught up in the turbulence o their own
transition into modern nationhood more than a
hundred years earlier Te dictum summarized what
he saw as the destiny o art in the modern world in
which the power o art to give lsquosensuous immediacyrsquo
to human worlds (its lsquohighest vocationrsquo) is eclipsed by
the statersquos rational secular legalistic and bureaucratic
character Art is rendered obsolete and marginal to
the operations o the mo dern state However it is
revalorized as something essentially aesthetic and
historical Hence the birth o the two dominant
institutions o art in Western modernity the art
museum and art history Moreover the continuance
o art in Western modernity was premised on this
sense o its historical nature and marginal social
status ndash as the history o Western modernism and the
avant-garde with their rapid succession o lsquoismsrsquo and
lsquomovementsrsquo has shown
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo poised on the thresholdo global decolonization was thus a deeply loaded
exhibition Its objects gathered rom museums pointed
to the impact o colonialism and the imperial order on
Pacific societies while its occasion pointed
enigmatically to a postcolonial uture It begged the
question o the uture o the soc ieties that its artworks
displayed For Goldwater they must give way to t he
irresistible transormations entailed in the making
o modern nation states and the spread o lsquouniversal
civilizationrsquo summed up by Paul Ricoeur in as
the ineluctable orces o democratization capitalist
economics and science and technology 6 In this context
the artistic traditions o these societies were ated to
become arts o the past a s many already had But the
history o decolonization in the Pacific would prove
less punctual more contradictory and ambiguous
than Goldwaterrsquos stoic aestheticism allowed
Te Lull Kitsch Spectacle and theLament for Lost Authenticity
Te first decade or so afer the Second World War
was marked by a kind o lull in the Pacific a pause
between the demise o the imperial system and the
political restructuring that dominated the region rom
the s to the s Tis was a period o anticipation
but uncertainty Many developments clearly pointed to
a postcolonial uture Te lsquogreat powersrsquo had signalled
their intention to reorder the world system at various
summits afer the war Colonies in Arica and South
Asia were already crumbling More locally indentured
labour laws were lifed in Australian New Guinea
France granted greater political autonomy to its Pacific
territories independence parties ormed in ahiti and
New Caledonia preparations or independence were
under way in Western Samoa and so on Nonetheless
the uture o imperial rule was still unclear Pre-war
governance structures were restored in many places
afer the war Racial ideologies o white superiority
and right to rule remained in place (and would not
definitively crumble until the s or later) Settlers in
colonial towns expected reorm but not necessarily thecomplete dismantling o the imperial order And in
places where lsquodevelopmentrsquo was minimal ndash in much
o New Guinea and the New Hebrides or example ndash
indigenous sel-government seemed a long way off
In this liminal state the subject o art in the
Pacific was largely inchoate dispersed in a variety o
aesthetically ambiguous contexts One o these lay
at the intersection between art museums cultural
anthropology the tribal art trade and an uncounted
number o small hamlets and villages particularly
in New Guinea and island Melanesia which still
produced or possessed the lsquoauthenticrsquo or lsquoquality piecesrsquo
that primitive art collectors and museums desired
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo exemplified this intersection
While this nexus o activities was certainly continuous
with practices beore the war the post-war period was
marked by a growing anxiety about the shrinking
opportunities to colle
the prolieration o a
the disruptive effects
commercial enterpri
kind o societies that
lsquovanishing primitiversquo
European collecting
Te anthropologist C
this ear in his popul
published in in w
anthropologyrsquos quest
given the pervasiventhroughout the world
mounted collecting e
to acquire ndash lsquoBeore I
it ndash what remained o
ake or examp
expedition to the Asm
in (lsquoill-atedrsquo bec
circumstances afer h
Rockeeller son o N
Rockeeller was a we
and photographer wh
acquire examples o A
established Museum
where he was also a t
recently and very par
Dutch administrator
priests were among
Guinearsquos tribes becautraditions associated
headhunting While
abandoned by m
culture was still thriv
the interests o missi
anthropologists ndash all
acilitating Rockeell
what was seen by him
the spectacular canoe
array o shields cere
out or bargaining ndash w
cameras ( page )In
ethnographic value c
terms o the importa
relationships Wester
rom prestigious art
superpowers were cle
Advertisement lsquoYour native
servantrsquo Pacific Islands
Monthly February 1951
This advertisement from a 1951
issue of Pacific Islands Monthly
reveals racial hierarchies and
colonial social norms still in
place after the Second World
War ndash though not for much
longer Published between
1931 and 2000 the regional
magazine reflected the
transformation of political and
ideological attitudes during the
decolonization era
7242019 Art in Oceania
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V
O
I C
E
D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T U
relationships were vital to the uture o Asmat culture
Nonetheless tropes o the lsquolastrsquo and the lsquovanishingrsquo
were indomitable and widely recycled in documentary
films illustrated magazines television eatures
newspaper articles and so on
Te counterpart to this lament or lost authenticity
in the immediate post-war decades was the
prolieration o tourist art and Oceanic kitsch As
discussed in the previous chapter the presence o
hundreds o thousands o soldiers in the Pacific duringthe Second World War created a lucrative t rade in
arteacts and souvenirs ndash lsquoersatz curiosrsquo as one writer
called them10 Te impact o that exchange reverberates
in the post-war popularization o Oceanic art within
the visual culture o the American leisure industry
Hotels motels restaurant chains and cocktail lounges
with names like lsquorader Vicsrsquo lsquoiki Bobsrsquo and lsquoAloha
Joesrsquo multiplied across the American suburban
landscape in the s and s Teir decor schemes
and advertising graphics appropriated Oceanic art
orms rom art books and exhibition catalogues Masks
and figurines became lounge ornaments while
entertainment shows mimicked cannibals headhunters
and hula dancers in a vast burlesque o Leacutevi-Straussrsquos
historical lament11 Although the genre has its charms
the translation o god figures and ritual sacra into
paperweights and saltshakers represents at its urthest
above left
Dr Adrian Gerbrands
Assistant Director of
the Rijksmuseum voor
Volkenkunde in Leiden
assists Michael Rockefeller
in making a selection of
Asmat shields for the
Museum of Primitive Art
in New York 1961
above right
Barney Westrsquos lsquoTiki Junctionrsquo
Sausalito California c 1968
Ersatz copies of Oceanic art
were made for sale to decorate
motel grounds bar rooms
home gardens and the like
This was part of a post-war
fad for tribal styles and there
was little concern for issues of
authenticity or cultural property
lsquo W H Y D I D M Y P E O P L E A B A N D O N T H E I R F E S T I V A L S rsquo
When the Hevehe masks finally came out of the eravo they danced in
the village for a month In the end the spirits had to be driven back into
the spirit world after staying with us for so long This was accomplished
ceremonially by the slaying of the Hevehe in which a young man was
selected to shoot an arrow at the leader of the masks and lsquokillrsquo it After
that the masks are ceremonially burned and the ashes and all other
remains from the Hevehe festival are thrown into the sea where the great
spirit of all Hevehes resides who will swallow them up
Unfortunately this ceremony was discontinued just before the war and
even the Kovave itself was abandoned some t wenty-five years ago My
own Kovave initiation was the one before the last
Why did my people abandon their festivals The missionaries got a lot of
the blame It is true of course that they did not like the initiation rites and
rather tended to discourage them But at that time their influence was not
all that great in Orokolo
I believe that taxation was a major factor Even though the tax was only
ten shillings per head at first and one pound later on t he young men had
to go out and earn it for themselves and their fathers So they drifted off
to Kerema and maybe Moresby seeking employment in shops or with
white masters While they were earning the money nobody remained athome to take an active part in the ceremonies Many of them lost interest
when they saw other more lsquorespecta blersquo ways of life
Excerpt from Albert Maori Kiki Kiki Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime
A New Guinea Autobiography Melbourne 1968 i
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE ABELAM ARE ONE OF THE LARGEST
groups in lowland Papua New Guinea They live
in villages of up to 900 people in the foothills of
the Prince Alexander Mountains north of the
Sepik River The Australian administration first
established a government post in their territory in 1937
re-establishing it in 1948 after the Japanese occupation
Thus it was only from the Second World War that the Abelam
were significantly affected by colonial influence and only after
that time that their art came to the attention of the wider world
The energetic brightly painted carvings and paintings made as
part of the long yam cult displayed on and in the cult houses
have since attracted substantial international interest especially
on the part of museums Whole cult house facades and the
carved and woven displays within them have been collected by
a number of museums the Australian Museum and the British
Museum among them A number of anthropologists notably
Anthony Forge and Diane Losche have worked with Abelam
communities and have been drawn by that engagement into
discussing the anthropology of art to questions about the
meaning and significance of specific designs and images
and into broader questions about the nature of art in those
societies where such a category does not exist
Abelam art is displayed in the village in and in front of
menrsquos cult houses Abelam hamlets are built on ridges the
houses are built around a central plaza the forest behind
them Many hamlets have a cult house which towers over
the domestic houses Houses have an A-frame construction
dependent on a long ridge pole supported close to the
ground at the back of the house and sweeping up at the front
cult-house ridge poles can rear up to 18 metres (59 ft) high
The sides of the house sloping away from the ridge pole to
the ground are at the same time its roof thatched with sago
palm leaves The Abelam see the roof-sides of the house as
being like the folded wings of a bird enclosing the space
withini The facade of the cult house is painted in a range of
reds yellows black and white in designs that often represent
the clan spirits or ngwalndu
The long yam cult focuses on the growing display and
exchange of special yams single straight cylindrical tubers
that are carefully and ritually cultivated to reach lengths of
more than 25 or 3 metres (8ndash10 ft) To be a man of substance
a man must be able to grow such yams as the anthropologist
Phyllis Kaberry observed there is a great deal of identification
between a man and his yam there is also a great deal of
identification between the yam and the supernaturalii Initiation
rituals focused on the long yam cult involve the manufacture
of woven and carved painted figures representing clan spirits
which are displayed inside the house decorated with leaves
flowers and fruit This process of making ndash the production
of yams of carvings and paintings ndash draws man and spirit
together The Abelam see paint as crucial to that process
The Abelam do not think about art but about the power
of images and especially of paint itself All Abelam magical
substances are classed as paint various colours being suitable
for various purposes red and a sort of purple the colours of
the substances used for sorcery and long yams are regarded
as the most powerfuliii For the Abelam painting is a sacred
activity in ritual contexts the paint itself is the medium
through which the benefits of the ceremony are transferred
to the initiates and to the village as a whole Paint is t he
essential magical substance of the yam cult LB
Art of the Ab ela m
Decorated menrsquos house
Abelam tribe Sepik District
New Guinea
Photograph Anthony Forge
1962
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356 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
extreme the radical dissemination o Oceanic art
into mass-produced commodities unredeemed by the
quasi-sanctity o the art museum Te phenomenon
was not confined to the United States It extended into
Oceania as well in towns such as Honolulu Papeete
Apia Rotorua Port Vila Agana and elsewhere
Indigenous artists made carvings and handicrafs or
commercial enterprises overseas and Islanders
provided perormers or entertainment shows in hotels
and tourist parks Te Pacific was also translated into
countless pictorial variations o noble chies sunsetbeaches dusky maidens palm-tree villages and other
clicheacuted variations o the erotic and picturesque ndash a set
o genres produced by a host o travelling artists
amateur painters and Islanders as well As Sima
Urale demonstrates in her documentary film on
the velvet painter Charles McPhee the heyday o
these popular genres corresponded with the twilight
years o the colonial Pacific when its visual stereotype
reigned unchallenged12
Customary arts were also increasingly bound to
tourism and media spectacle From the late s the
Pacific Islands upgraded or built new airfields and
hotels and linked into international airline routes in
order to capitalize on the economic opportunities o
an expanded tourist industry in the looming lsquojet agersquo
In the first Goroka show was staged in the New
Guinea Highlands as a spectacular event eaturing
some ten thousand native perormers assembled or
dances games mock fights and the like dressed in
dazzling displays o traditional costume Although the
show was conceived by the Australian administration
in order to build regional unity across rival tribal
groups its success was inseparable rom the attendance
o hundreds o European visitors lsquowith expensive
cameras exposure meters and tripodshelliptaking movies
or expensive colour stillsrsquo13 In a similar event the
Mount Hagen show also in New Guinea described by
Pacific Islands Monthly as lsquothe greatest native show on
earthrsquo eatured a staggering seventy thousandparticipants and was attended by over a thousand
European visitors including documentary filmmakers
and editors o international magazines like National
Geographic and American Readerrsquos Digest people
flown in on chartered aircraf14 In other words the
Pacific was bound up in what Guy Debord called the
vast lsquospectaculariz ationrsquo o society in the post-war era
dominated by consumer capitalism in which the
image itsel in a variety o media was the primary
object o production
and stereotyped Pac
spectacle but they w
consumers Te Pacifi
magazines and Islan
Wayne and Mickey M
global lsquoculture indus
lsquospectaclersquo by post-wa
turned into society a
the Pacific
Yet the expansio
commercialization opredominant vehicle
a growing anxiety w
particularly among t
movements or politi
the s and s t
over the production
legacy Consider or
o Māori Arts and Cr
Rotorua had been a t
above left
Savea Malietoa
untitled painting nd
Oil on board 65 x 124 cm
(25 5 frasl 8 x 48 7 frasl 8 in) Courtesy
Maina Afamasaga
Oil paintings of village scenes
and tropical sunsets were
and still are commonplace
in many Samoan homes and
businesses One of Samoarsquos
best and most prolific artists
was Savea Malietoa In this
painting he depicts a faletele
(big house) and modern church
in a village setting
below left
Charlie McPhee untitled oil
painting on velvet c 1960
In 1997 Samoan filmmaker
Sima Urale made a film about
velvet painter Charlie McPhee
who had lived a lsquocolourful lifersquo
in the Pacific seeking pleasure
adventure and women A
lsquomockumentaryrsquo and a tribute
the film used this painting by
the artist as the exemplary
lsquoobject of desirersquo for an era
that was passing
Mount Hagen show 1965
Photograph David BealANTA
State Library NSW Sydney
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358 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
nineteenth century eaturing Māori cultural
perormances tours in geothermal parks and souvenirs
or sale It was also where Sir Apirana Ngata established
the School o Māori Arts and Crafs in which
spearheaded the recovery o the art o carving rom
near oblivion and did much to rehabilitate whare
whakairo (carved and decorated meeting houses) and
Māori ceremonies among tribes and sub-tribes in the
s and s16 Te School had waned afer the war
but was re-established by an Act o Parliament in
as the Institute o Māori Arts and Crafs and placed
under the Department o ourism But while theSchool had managed to balance its services to the
tourist industry with the goals o cultural preservation
the Institute ound itsel increasingly dominated by
tourism It became a closed system producing
qualified carvers to produce high-end souvenirs or
a very limited market effectively centred around the
Institute itsel However in a telling shif the Institute
was criticized by other Māori Some Māori modernists
(to be discussed later in the chapter) saw the Institute
as irrelevant and out o date while Māori academic
Hirini Moko Mead elt that its educational unctions
had been compromised by its placement under the
Department o ourism Pointing to the lsquoenced and
raised walk-wayrsquo provided or tourists to lsquolook down
in saety upon the curiosities working at their benchesrsquo
(see page ) Mead concluded lsquoTe trainees and their
instructor are exhibited like prize animals in a zoorsquo17
Such critiques indicated a new assertiveness about the value and meaning o ind igenous art and culture Te
lull was over
Nationhood the Arts and Cultural Revival
Te drive or independence and political
re-empowerment which galvanized the Pacific rom
the s to the s reocused the relevance o art
and the arts in Oceania Above all the prospect o new
nationhood brought about a dramatic resurgence o
customary culture and tradition recoded in national
terms Te ethos o revival was encapsulated by Sir
Apirana Ngata in (the year New Zealand became
ormally independent rom Great Britain) when he
predicted that lsquoa great uture lay ahead o the Pacificrsquo
and admonished Māori to lsquotake a bigger part in the
economic social and commercial lie o New Zealand
and to keep alive their native traditions and bring about
a full revival of Māori culturersquo 18 Ngatarsquos philosophy
o reviving lsquonative traditionsrsquo while embracing the
conditions o modern nationhood would be echoed by
indigenous leaders across the Pacific as decolonization
became a political reality beginning in the s
Te political history o decolonization is complex
and cannot be ully recounted here but a ew salient
points are worth making One is the dramatic nature
o imperial withdrawal rom the Pacific (as rom other
parts o the world) At the end o the Second World
War the entire region was under some orm o direct
imperial or external rule By the end o the simperial governance had largely been dismantled
leaving in its wake a host o new Pacific states Bar
some exceptions most were ully independent nations
or independent lsquoin ree association withrsquo their ormer
colonial power Where independence had not been
achieved or stalled or ormally rejected those
continuing territories nonetheless enjoyed significantly
greater political autonomy than existed in the pre-war
era19 In other words however qualified by the messy
specificities o particular situations decolonization
was part o a concerted process to restructure the
global political social and economic order
(Decolonization in this sense should not be conused
with myriad struggles against colonialism which
certainly made the most o the opportunities o ormal
decolonization but have much older histories and
continue into the present)
A second point is the uneven incomplete andcontradictory character o decolonization in the
Pacific Te possibility o national independence
was undoubtedly the dominant political ambition o
Pacific leaders though it played out differently across
the region and no simple generalization is possible
In territories administered by anglophone powers
(Britain Australia New Zealand and the United
States) independence was generally agreed upon as
the mutually preerred outcome (However this was
not true in all cases American Samoa and Guam
elected to remain territories o the United States and
there were many people ndash in Fiji onga and Austra lian
New Guinea or example ndash who elt independence was
being oisted on them whether they wanted it or not)
Western Samoa got the ball rolling when it became
independent rom New Zealand administration in
An impressive succession o new states ollowed the
Cook Islands in Nauru in onga and Fiji in
Niue in Papua New Guinea in uvalu
and the Solomon Islands in Vanuatu in
the Marshall Islands and the Federated States o
Micronesia in and Belau in Te list testifies
to the supra-national orces driving decolonization
But it also obscures the difficult business o actually
achieving nationhood and the precarious nature o
many o the states thus created It obscures too the
many disputes ndash about the timing o decolonization
the geography o borders the nature o constitutions
and parliamentary structures the continuedexploitation o islands used as naval bases and nuclear
testing sites in the politics o the Cold War etcetera
ndash that complicated and interered with decolonizationrsquos
inexorable outcome
In the French Pacific independence was a much
more contested objective France saw decolonization
differently to the anglophone powers20 While it
granted French citizenship rights and significant
political autonomy to its Pacific territories soon afer
the Second World War it stopped short o ull
independence and generally opposed and even
obstructed political movements in that direction
seeing decolonization rather as transpiring within
the greater rancophone republic Moreover loyalties
to France among local settler lsquodemirsquo and migrant
populations made the indigenous struggle or
independence a matter o intense and sometimes
violent political dispute Only in the c ase o the NewHebrides (Vanuatu) which France had jointly ruled
with Britain since did a French colony become
ully independent Nationhood and independence
were also complicated in the anglophone settler states
o Hawailsquoi New Zealand and Australia where
nineteenth-century colonization and massive settler
migration had reduced indigenous people to minorities
in their own land Indeed the weight o this history
led to the Hawaiian Islands becoming an American
state in In these places settler withdrawal was
impossible and decolonization played out rather as
a struggle or rights recognition return o illegally
expropriated land and social political and economic
re-empowerment
Te contradictory character o decolonization is
also illustrated by the ate o West Papua ormerly
Netherlands New Guinea which ound itsel caught
up in the opportunis
neighbour Indonesia
Afer winning its ind
Indonesia laid claim
part o its national te
quit the colony and h
disputed the legitima
developed between th
s Recognizing th
rantically strugg led
tasks o sel-governm
national flag o West
was raised in the terr
set or independenceIndonesia pressed its
President Sukarno in
rhetoric against the D
War ears to neutrali
Australia and the Un
the rise o communis
to make an enemy o
threatening to take N
and indeed he invade
With little internatio
to war or the colony
control o West Papu
United Nations ndash to I
renamed it West Iria
to this affair Indones
on sel-government i
circumstances in whi
The Morning Star flag of
independent West Papua
now illegal under
Indonesian law
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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350 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
collected emulated written about and admired it
within the category o lsquoprimitive artrsquo What was new
according to art historian Robert Goldwater was the
broad public acceptance o such objects as art
occurring in Western metropolises in the mid-
twentieth century in large part through the sanction
o institutions such as the Museum o Modern Art3
But in view o the showrsquos historical moment the
significance o the recategorization was ambiguous
On the one hand it signalled the liberality o
modernist aesthetics drawing objects previously
regarded as curiosities idols or ethnographicdocuments into a discourse about the universality o
artistic orm and eeling Teir new status challenged
centuries o racial prejudice about art as an exclusive
index o European superiority On the other hand
becoming art carried more problematic implications
particularly or the cultures whose art was on view
As Goldwater pointed out writing in the lsquotrendrsquo
towards lsquocomplete aesthetic acceptancersquo coincided
with the process o global decolonization It was
lsquohastened by the establishment o the ormer colonies
as independent nations and the transormation o their
traditional cultures under the impact o modern
technology and economy Te result was that with only
a ew exceptions the primitive arts became arts o the
past (in some cases the very recent past) and thus lost
part o their previous unction as documentation o
contemporary primitive culturesrsquo4 In other words
becoming art in the modern sense was allied to anarrative o modern nationhood in which lsquotraditional
culturesrsquo and lsquoprimitiversquo lie orms were doomed
to obsolescence
Behind Goldwaterrsquos statement is a undamental
modernist narrative about the ate o art in modernity
encapsulated in the nineteenth-century philosopher
G W F Hegelrsquos amous dictum that lsquoart considered
in its highest vocation is and remains or us a thing
o the pastrsquo5 Written in the wake o the French
Revolution the lsquousrsquo Hegel reers to are Western
Europeans caught up in the turbulence o their own
transition into modern nationhood more than a
hundred years earlier Te dictum summarized what
he saw as the destiny o art in the modern world in
which the power o art to give lsquosensuous immediacyrsquo
to human worlds (its lsquohighest vocationrsquo) is eclipsed by
the statersquos rational secular legalistic and bureaucratic
character Art is rendered obsolete and marginal to
the operations o the mo dern state However it is
revalorized as something essentially aesthetic and
historical Hence the birth o the two dominant
institutions o art in Western modernity the art
museum and art history Moreover the continuance
o art in Western modernity was premised on this
sense o its historical nature and marginal social
status ndash as the history o Western modernism and the
avant-garde with their rapid succession o lsquoismsrsquo and
lsquomovementsrsquo has shown
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo poised on the thresholdo global decolonization was thus a deeply loaded
exhibition Its objects gathered rom museums pointed
to the impact o colonialism and the imperial order on
Pacific societies while its occasion pointed
enigmatically to a postcolonial uture It begged the
question o the uture o the soc ieties that its artworks
displayed For Goldwater they must give way to t he
irresistible transormations entailed in the making
o modern nation states and the spread o lsquouniversal
civilizationrsquo summed up by Paul Ricoeur in as
the ineluctable orces o democratization capitalist
economics and science and technology 6 In this context
the artistic traditions o these societies were ated to
become arts o the past a s many already had But the
history o decolonization in the Pacific would prove
less punctual more contradictory and ambiguous
than Goldwaterrsquos stoic aestheticism allowed
Te Lull Kitsch Spectacle and theLament for Lost Authenticity
Te first decade or so afer the Second World War
was marked by a kind o lull in the Pacific a pause
between the demise o the imperial system and the
political restructuring that dominated the region rom
the s to the s Tis was a period o anticipation
but uncertainty Many developments clearly pointed to
a postcolonial uture Te lsquogreat powersrsquo had signalled
their intention to reorder the world system at various
summits afer the war Colonies in Arica and South
Asia were already crumbling More locally indentured
labour laws were lifed in Australian New Guinea
France granted greater political autonomy to its Pacific
territories independence parties ormed in ahiti and
New Caledonia preparations or independence were
under way in Western Samoa and so on Nonetheless
the uture o imperial rule was still unclear Pre-war
governance structures were restored in many places
afer the war Racial ideologies o white superiority
and right to rule remained in place (and would not
definitively crumble until the s or later) Settlers in
colonial towns expected reorm but not necessarily thecomplete dismantling o the imperial order And in
places where lsquodevelopmentrsquo was minimal ndash in much
o New Guinea and the New Hebrides or example ndash
indigenous sel-government seemed a long way off
In this liminal state the subject o art in the
Pacific was largely inchoate dispersed in a variety o
aesthetically ambiguous contexts One o these lay
at the intersection between art museums cultural
anthropology the tribal art trade and an uncounted
number o small hamlets and villages particularly
in New Guinea and island Melanesia which still
produced or possessed the lsquoauthenticrsquo or lsquoquality piecesrsquo
that primitive art collectors and museums desired
lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo exemplified this intersection
While this nexus o activities was certainly continuous
with practices beore the war the post-war period was
marked by a growing anxiety about the shrinking
opportunities to colle
the prolieration o a
the disruptive effects
commercial enterpri
kind o societies that
lsquovanishing primitiversquo
European collecting
Te anthropologist C
this ear in his popul
published in in w
anthropologyrsquos quest
given the pervasiventhroughout the world
mounted collecting e
to acquire ndash lsquoBeore I
it ndash what remained o
ake or examp
expedition to the Asm
in (lsquoill-atedrsquo bec
circumstances afer h
Rockeeller son o N
Rockeeller was a we
and photographer wh
acquire examples o A
established Museum
where he was also a t
recently and very par
Dutch administrator
priests were among
Guinearsquos tribes becautraditions associated
headhunting While
abandoned by m
culture was still thriv
the interests o missi
anthropologists ndash all
acilitating Rockeell
what was seen by him
the spectacular canoe
array o shields cere
out or bargaining ndash w
cameras ( page )In
ethnographic value c
terms o the importa
relationships Wester
rom prestigious art
superpowers were cle
Advertisement lsquoYour native
servantrsquo Pacific Islands
Monthly February 1951
This advertisement from a 1951
issue of Pacific Islands Monthly
reveals racial hierarchies and
colonial social norms still in
place after the Second World
War ndash though not for much
longer Published between
1931 and 2000 the regional
magazine reflected the
transformation of political and
ideological attitudes during the
decolonization era
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 623
V
O
I C
E
D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T U
relationships were vital to the uture o Asmat culture
Nonetheless tropes o the lsquolastrsquo and the lsquovanishingrsquo
were indomitable and widely recycled in documentary
films illustrated magazines television eatures
newspaper articles and so on
Te counterpart to this lament or lost authenticity
in the immediate post-war decades was the
prolieration o tourist art and Oceanic kitsch As
discussed in the previous chapter the presence o
hundreds o thousands o soldiers in the Pacific duringthe Second World War created a lucrative t rade in
arteacts and souvenirs ndash lsquoersatz curiosrsquo as one writer
called them10 Te impact o that exchange reverberates
in the post-war popularization o Oceanic art within
the visual culture o the American leisure industry
Hotels motels restaurant chains and cocktail lounges
with names like lsquorader Vicsrsquo lsquoiki Bobsrsquo and lsquoAloha
Joesrsquo multiplied across the American suburban
landscape in the s and s Teir decor schemes
and advertising graphics appropriated Oceanic art
orms rom art books and exhibition catalogues Masks
and figurines became lounge ornaments while
entertainment shows mimicked cannibals headhunters
and hula dancers in a vast burlesque o Leacutevi-Straussrsquos
historical lament11 Although the genre has its charms
the translation o god figures and ritual sacra into
paperweights and saltshakers represents at its urthest
above left
Dr Adrian Gerbrands
Assistant Director of
the Rijksmuseum voor
Volkenkunde in Leiden
assists Michael Rockefeller
in making a selection of
Asmat shields for the
Museum of Primitive Art
in New York 1961
above right
Barney Westrsquos lsquoTiki Junctionrsquo
Sausalito California c 1968
Ersatz copies of Oceanic art
were made for sale to decorate
motel grounds bar rooms
home gardens and the like
This was part of a post-war
fad for tribal styles and there
was little concern for issues of
authenticity or cultural property
lsquo W H Y D I D M Y P E O P L E A B A N D O N T H E I R F E S T I V A L S rsquo
When the Hevehe masks finally came out of the eravo they danced in
the village for a month In the end the spirits had to be driven back into
the spirit world after staying with us for so long This was accomplished
ceremonially by the slaying of the Hevehe in which a young man was
selected to shoot an arrow at the leader of the masks and lsquokillrsquo it After
that the masks are ceremonially burned and the ashes and all other
remains from the Hevehe festival are thrown into the sea where the great
spirit of all Hevehes resides who will swallow them up
Unfortunately this ceremony was discontinued just before the war and
even the Kovave itself was abandoned some t wenty-five years ago My
own Kovave initiation was the one before the last
Why did my people abandon their festivals The missionaries got a lot of
the blame It is true of course that they did not like the initiation rites and
rather tended to discourage them But at that time their influence was not
all that great in Orokolo
I believe that taxation was a major factor Even though the tax was only
ten shillings per head at first and one pound later on t he young men had
to go out and earn it for themselves and their fathers So they drifted off
to Kerema and maybe Moresby seeking employment in shops or with
white masters While they were earning the money nobody remained athome to take an active part in the ceremonies Many of them lost interest
when they saw other more lsquorespecta blersquo ways of life
Excerpt from Albert Maori Kiki Kiki Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime
A New Guinea Autobiography Melbourne 1968 i
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE ABELAM ARE ONE OF THE LARGEST
groups in lowland Papua New Guinea They live
in villages of up to 900 people in the foothills of
the Prince Alexander Mountains north of the
Sepik River The Australian administration first
established a government post in their territory in 1937
re-establishing it in 1948 after the Japanese occupation
Thus it was only from the Second World War that the Abelam
were significantly affected by colonial influence and only after
that time that their art came to the attention of the wider world
The energetic brightly painted carvings and paintings made as
part of the long yam cult displayed on and in the cult houses
have since attracted substantial international interest especially
on the part of museums Whole cult house facades and the
carved and woven displays within them have been collected by
a number of museums the Australian Museum and the British
Museum among them A number of anthropologists notably
Anthony Forge and Diane Losche have worked with Abelam
communities and have been drawn by that engagement into
discussing the anthropology of art to questions about the
meaning and significance of specific designs and images
and into broader questions about the nature of art in those
societies where such a category does not exist
Abelam art is displayed in the village in and in front of
menrsquos cult houses Abelam hamlets are built on ridges the
houses are built around a central plaza the forest behind
them Many hamlets have a cult house which towers over
the domestic houses Houses have an A-frame construction
dependent on a long ridge pole supported close to the
ground at the back of the house and sweeping up at the front
cult-house ridge poles can rear up to 18 metres (59 ft) high
The sides of the house sloping away from the ridge pole to
the ground are at the same time its roof thatched with sago
palm leaves The Abelam see the roof-sides of the house as
being like the folded wings of a bird enclosing the space
withini The facade of the cult house is painted in a range of
reds yellows black and white in designs that often represent
the clan spirits or ngwalndu
The long yam cult focuses on the growing display and
exchange of special yams single straight cylindrical tubers
that are carefully and ritually cultivated to reach lengths of
more than 25 or 3 metres (8ndash10 ft) To be a man of substance
a man must be able to grow such yams as the anthropologist
Phyllis Kaberry observed there is a great deal of identification
between a man and his yam there is also a great deal of
identification between the yam and the supernaturalii Initiation
rituals focused on the long yam cult involve the manufacture
of woven and carved painted figures representing clan spirits
which are displayed inside the house decorated with leaves
flowers and fruit This process of making ndash the production
of yams of carvings and paintings ndash draws man and spirit
together The Abelam see paint as crucial to that process
The Abelam do not think about art but about the power
of images and especially of paint itself All Abelam magical
substances are classed as paint various colours being suitable
for various purposes red and a sort of purple the colours of
the substances used for sorcery and long yams are regarded
as the most powerfuliii For the Abelam painting is a sacred
activity in ritual contexts the paint itself is the medium
through which the benefits of the ceremony are transferred
to the initiates and to the village as a whole Paint is t he
essential magical substance of the yam cult LB
Art of the Ab ela m
Decorated menrsquos house
Abelam tribe Sepik District
New Guinea
Photograph Anthony Forge
1962
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356 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
extreme the radical dissemination o Oceanic art
into mass-produced commodities unredeemed by the
quasi-sanctity o the art museum Te phenomenon
was not confined to the United States It extended into
Oceania as well in towns such as Honolulu Papeete
Apia Rotorua Port Vila Agana and elsewhere
Indigenous artists made carvings and handicrafs or
commercial enterprises overseas and Islanders
provided perormers or entertainment shows in hotels
and tourist parks Te Pacific was also translated into
countless pictorial variations o noble chies sunsetbeaches dusky maidens palm-tree villages and other
clicheacuted variations o the erotic and picturesque ndash a set
o genres produced by a host o travelling artists
amateur painters and Islanders as well As Sima
Urale demonstrates in her documentary film on
the velvet painter Charles McPhee the heyday o
these popular genres corresponded with the twilight
years o the colonial Pacific when its visual stereotype
reigned unchallenged12
Customary arts were also increasingly bound to
tourism and media spectacle From the late s the
Pacific Islands upgraded or built new airfields and
hotels and linked into international airline routes in
order to capitalize on the economic opportunities o
an expanded tourist industry in the looming lsquojet agersquo
In the first Goroka show was staged in the New
Guinea Highlands as a spectacular event eaturing
some ten thousand native perormers assembled or
dances games mock fights and the like dressed in
dazzling displays o traditional costume Although the
show was conceived by the Australian administration
in order to build regional unity across rival tribal
groups its success was inseparable rom the attendance
o hundreds o European visitors lsquowith expensive
cameras exposure meters and tripodshelliptaking movies
or expensive colour stillsrsquo13 In a similar event the
Mount Hagen show also in New Guinea described by
Pacific Islands Monthly as lsquothe greatest native show on
earthrsquo eatured a staggering seventy thousandparticipants and was attended by over a thousand
European visitors including documentary filmmakers
and editors o international magazines like National
Geographic and American Readerrsquos Digest people
flown in on chartered aircraf14 In other words the
Pacific was bound up in what Guy Debord called the
vast lsquospectaculariz ationrsquo o society in the post-war era
dominated by consumer capitalism in which the
image itsel in a variety o media was the primary
object o production
and stereotyped Pac
spectacle but they w
consumers Te Pacifi
magazines and Islan
Wayne and Mickey M
global lsquoculture indus
lsquospectaclersquo by post-wa
turned into society a
the Pacific
Yet the expansio
commercialization opredominant vehicle
a growing anxiety w
particularly among t
movements or politi
the s and s t
over the production
legacy Consider or
o Māori Arts and Cr
Rotorua had been a t
above left
Savea Malietoa
untitled painting nd
Oil on board 65 x 124 cm
(25 5 frasl 8 x 48 7 frasl 8 in) Courtesy
Maina Afamasaga
Oil paintings of village scenes
and tropical sunsets were
and still are commonplace
in many Samoan homes and
businesses One of Samoarsquos
best and most prolific artists
was Savea Malietoa In this
painting he depicts a faletele
(big house) and modern church
in a village setting
below left
Charlie McPhee untitled oil
painting on velvet c 1960
In 1997 Samoan filmmaker
Sima Urale made a film about
velvet painter Charlie McPhee
who had lived a lsquocolourful lifersquo
in the Pacific seeking pleasure
adventure and women A
lsquomockumentaryrsquo and a tribute
the film used this painting by
the artist as the exemplary
lsquoobject of desirersquo for an era
that was passing
Mount Hagen show 1965
Photograph David BealANTA
State Library NSW Sydney
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358 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
nineteenth century eaturing Māori cultural
perormances tours in geothermal parks and souvenirs
or sale It was also where Sir Apirana Ngata established
the School o Māori Arts and Crafs in which
spearheaded the recovery o the art o carving rom
near oblivion and did much to rehabilitate whare
whakairo (carved and decorated meeting houses) and
Māori ceremonies among tribes and sub-tribes in the
s and s16 Te School had waned afer the war
but was re-established by an Act o Parliament in
as the Institute o Māori Arts and Crafs and placed
under the Department o ourism But while theSchool had managed to balance its services to the
tourist industry with the goals o cultural preservation
the Institute ound itsel increasingly dominated by
tourism It became a closed system producing
qualified carvers to produce high-end souvenirs or
a very limited market effectively centred around the
Institute itsel However in a telling shif the Institute
was criticized by other Māori Some Māori modernists
(to be discussed later in the chapter) saw the Institute
as irrelevant and out o date while Māori academic
Hirini Moko Mead elt that its educational unctions
had been compromised by its placement under the
Department o ourism Pointing to the lsquoenced and
raised walk-wayrsquo provided or tourists to lsquolook down
in saety upon the curiosities working at their benchesrsquo
(see page ) Mead concluded lsquoTe trainees and their
instructor are exhibited like prize animals in a zoorsquo17
Such critiques indicated a new assertiveness about the value and meaning o ind igenous art and culture Te
lull was over
Nationhood the Arts and Cultural Revival
Te drive or independence and political
re-empowerment which galvanized the Pacific rom
the s to the s reocused the relevance o art
and the arts in Oceania Above all the prospect o new
nationhood brought about a dramatic resurgence o
customary culture and tradition recoded in national
terms Te ethos o revival was encapsulated by Sir
Apirana Ngata in (the year New Zealand became
ormally independent rom Great Britain) when he
predicted that lsquoa great uture lay ahead o the Pacificrsquo
and admonished Māori to lsquotake a bigger part in the
economic social and commercial lie o New Zealand
and to keep alive their native traditions and bring about
a full revival of Māori culturersquo 18 Ngatarsquos philosophy
o reviving lsquonative traditionsrsquo while embracing the
conditions o modern nationhood would be echoed by
indigenous leaders across the Pacific as decolonization
became a political reality beginning in the s
Te political history o decolonization is complex
and cannot be ully recounted here but a ew salient
points are worth making One is the dramatic nature
o imperial withdrawal rom the Pacific (as rom other
parts o the world) At the end o the Second World
War the entire region was under some orm o direct
imperial or external rule By the end o the simperial governance had largely been dismantled
leaving in its wake a host o new Pacific states Bar
some exceptions most were ully independent nations
or independent lsquoin ree association withrsquo their ormer
colonial power Where independence had not been
achieved or stalled or ormally rejected those
continuing territories nonetheless enjoyed significantly
greater political autonomy than existed in the pre-war
era19 In other words however qualified by the messy
specificities o particular situations decolonization
was part o a concerted process to restructure the
global political social and economic order
(Decolonization in this sense should not be conused
with myriad struggles against colonialism which
certainly made the most o the opportunities o ormal
decolonization but have much older histories and
continue into the present)
A second point is the uneven incomplete andcontradictory character o decolonization in the
Pacific Te possibility o national independence
was undoubtedly the dominant political ambition o
Pacific leaders though it played out differently across
the region and no simple generalization is possible
In territories administered by anglophone powers
(Britain Australia New Zealand and the United
States) independence was generally agreed upon as
the mutually preerred outcome (However this was
not true in all cases American Samoa and Guam
elected to remain territories o the United States and
there were many people ndash in Fiji onga and Austra lian
New Guinea or example ndash who elt independence was
being oisted on them whether they wanted it or not)
Western Samoa got the ball rolling when it became
independent rom New Zealand administration in
An impressive succession o new states ollowed the
Cook Islands in Nauru in onga and Fiji in
Niue in Papua New Guinea in uvalu
and the Solomon Islands in Vanuatu in
the Marshall Islands and the Federated States o
Micronesia in and Belau in Te list testifies
to the supra-national orces driving decolonization
But it also obscures the difficult business o actually
achieving nationhood and the precarious nature o
many o the states thus created It obscures too the
many disputes ndash about the timing o decolonization
the geography o borders the nature o constitutions
and parliamentary structures the continuedexploitation o islands used as naval bases and nuclear
testing sites in the politics o the Cold War etcetera
ndash that complicated and interered with decolonizationrsquos
inexorable outcome
In the French Pacific independence was a much
more contested objective France saw decolonization
differently to the anglophone powers20 While it
granted French citizenship rights and significant
political autonomy to its Pacific territories soon afer
the Second World War it stopped short o ull
independence and generally opposed and even
obstructed political movements in that direction
seeing decolonization rather as transpiring within
the greater rancophone republic Moreover loyalties
to France among local settler lsquodemirsquo and migrant
populations made the indigenous struggle or
independence a matter o intense and sometimes
violent political dispute Only in the c ase o the NewHebrides (Vanuatu) which France had jointly ruled
with Britain since did a French colony become
ully independent Nationhood and independence
were also complicated in the anglophone settler states
o Hawailsquoi New Zealand and Australia where
nineteenth-century colonization and massive settler
migration had reduced indigenous people to minorities
in their own land Indeed the weight o this history
led to the Hawaiian Islands becoming an American
state in In these places settler withdrawal was
impossible and decolonization played out rather as
a struggle or rights recognition return o illegally
expropriated land and social political and economic
re-empowerment
Te contradictory character o decolonization is
also illustrated by the ate o West Papua ormerly
Netherlands New Guinea which ound itsel caught
up in the opportunis
neighbour Indonesia
Afer winning its ind
Indonesia laid claim
part o its national te
quit the colony and h
disputed the legitima
developed between th
s Recognizing th
rantically strugg led
tasks o sel-governm
national flag o West
was raised in the terr
set or independenceIndonesia pressed its
President Sukarno in
rhetoric against the D
War ears to neutrali
Australia and the Un
the rise o communis
to make an enemy o
threatening to take N
and indeed he invade
With little internatio
to war or the colony
control o West Papu
United Nations ndash to I
renamed it West Iria
to this affair Indones
on sel-government i
circumstances in whi
The Morning Star flag of
independent West Papua
now illegal under
Indonesian law
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1623
372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1823
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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V
O
I C
E
D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T U
relationships were vital to the uture o Asmat culture
Nonetheless tropes o the lsquolastrsquo and the lsquovanishingrsquo
were indomitable and widely recycled in documentary
films illustrated magazines television eatures
newspaper articles and so on
Te counterpart to this lament or lost authenticity
in the immediate post-war decades was the
prolieration o tourist art and Oceanic kitsch As
discussed in the previous chapter the presence o
hundreds o thousands o soldiers in the Pacific duringthe Second World War created a lucrative t rade in
arteacts and souvenirs ndash lsquoersatz curiosrsquo as one writer
called them10 Te impact o that exchange reverberates
in the post-war popularization o Oceanic art within
the visual culture o the American leisure industry
Hotels motels restaurant chains and cocktail lounges
with names like lsquorader Vicsrsquo lsquoiki Bobsrsquo and lsquoAloha
Joesrsquo multiplied across the American suburban
landscape in the s and s Teir decor schemes
and advertising graphics appropriated Oceanic art
orms rom art books and exhibition catalogues Masks
and figurines became lounge ornaments while
entertainment shows mimicked cannibals headhunters
and hula dancers in a vast burlesque o Leacutevi-Straussrsquos
historical lament11 Although the genre has its charms
the translation o god figures and ritual sacra into
paperweights and saltshakers represents at its urthest
above left
Dr Adrian Gerbrands
Assistant Director of
the Rijksmuseum voor
Volkenkunde in Leiden
assists Michael Rockefeller
in making a selection of
Asmat shields for the
Museum of Primitive Art
in New York 1961
above right
Barney Westrsquos lsquoTiki Junctionrsquo
Sausalito California c 1968
Ersatz copies of Oceanic art
were made for sale to decorate
motel grounds bar rooms
home gardens and the like
This was part of a post-war
fad for tribal styles and there
was little concern for issues of
authenticity or cultural property
lsquo W H Y D I D M Y P E O P L E A B A N D O N T H E I R F E S T I V A L S rsquo
When the Hevehe masks finally came out of the eravo they danced in
the village for a month In the end the spirits had to be driven back into
the spirit world after staying with us for so long This was accomplished
ceremonially by the slaying of the Hevehe in which a young man was
selected to shoot an arrow at the leader of the masks and lsquokillrsquo it After
that the masks are ceremonially burned and the ashes and all other
remains from the Hevehe festival are thrown into the sea where the great
spirit of all Hevehes resides who will swallow them up
Unfortunately this ceremony was discontinued just before the war and
even the Kovave itself was abandoned some t wenty-five years ago My
own Kovave initiation was the one before the last
Why did my people abandon their festivals The missionaries got a lot of
the blame It is true of course that they did not like the initiation rites and
rather tended to discourage them But at that time their influence was not
all that great in Orokolo
I believe that taxation was a major factor Even though the tax was only
ten shillings per head at first and one pound later on t he young men had
to go out and earn it for themselves and their fathers So they drifted off
to Kerema and maybe Moresby seeking employment in shops or with
white masters While they were earning the money nobody remained athome to take an active part in the ceremonies Many of them lost interest
when they saw other more lsquorespecta blersquo ways of life
Excerpt from Albert Maori Kiki Kiki Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime
A New Guinea Autobiography Melbourne 1968 i
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE ABELAM ARE ONE OF THE LARGEST
groups in lowland Papua New Guinea They live
in villages of up to 900 people in the foothills of
the Prince Alexander Mountains north of the
Sepik River The Australian administration first
established a government post in their territory in 1937
re-establishing it in 1948 after the Japanese occupation
Thus it was only from the Second World War that the Abelam
were significantly affected by colonial influence and only after
that time that their art came to the attention of the wider world
The energetic brightly painted carvings and paintings made as
part of the long yam cult displayed on and in the cult houses
have since attracted substantial international interest especially
on the part of museums Whole cult house facades and the
carved and woven displays within them have been collected by
a number of museums the Australian Museum and the British
Museum among them A number of anthropologists notably
Anthony Forge and Diane Losche have worked with Abelam
communities and have been drawn by that engagement into
discussing the anthropology of art to questions about the
meaning and significance of specific designs and images
and into broader questions about the nature of art in those
societies where such a category does not exist
Abelam art is displayed in the village in and in front of
menrsquos cult houses Abelam hamlets are built on ridges the
houses are built around a central plaza the forest behind
them Many hamlets have a cult house which towers over
the domestic houses Houses have an A-frame construction
dependent on a long ridge pole supported close to the
ground at the back of the house and sweeping up at the front
cult-house ridge poles can rear up to 18 metres (59 ft) high
The sides of the house sloping away from the ridge pole to
the ground are at the same time its roof thatched with sago
palm leaves The Abelam see the roof-sides of the house as
being like the folded wings of a bird enclosing the space
withini The facade of the cult house is painted in a range of
reds yellows black and white in designs that often represent
the clan spirits or ngwalndu
The long yam cult focuses on the growing display and
exchange of special yams single straight cylindrical tubers
that are carefully and ritually cultivated to reach lengths of
more than 25 or 3 metres (8ndash10 ft) To be a man of substance
a man must be able to grow such yams as the anthropologist
Phyllis Kaberry observed there is a great deal of identification
between a man and his yam there is also a great deal of
identification between the yam and the supernaturalii Initiation
rituals focused on the long yam cult involve the manufacture
of woven and carved painted figures representing clan spirits
which are displayed inside the house decorated with leaves
flowers and fruit This process of making ndash the production
of yams of carvings and paintings ndash draws man and spirit
together The Abelam see paint as crucial to that process
The Abelam do not think about art but about the power
of images and especially of paint itself All Abelam magical
substances are classed as paint various colours being suitable
for various purposes red and a sort of purple the colours of
the substances used for sorcery and long yams are regarded
as the most powerfuliii For the Abelam painting is a sacred
activity in ritual contexts the paint itself is the medium
through which the benefits of the ceremony are transferred
to the initiates and to the village as a whole Paint is t he
essential magical substance of the yam cult LB
Art of the Ab ela m
Decorated menrsquos house
Abelam tribe Sepik District
New Guinea
Photograph Anthony Forge
1962
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356 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
extreme the radical dissemination o Oceanic art
into mass-produced commodities unredeemed by the
quasi-sanctity o the art museum Te phenomenon
was not confined to the United States It extended into
Oceania as well in towns such as Honolulu Papeete
Apia Rotorua Port Vila Agana and elsewhere
Indigenous artists made carvings and handicrafs or
commercial enterprises overseas and Islanders
provided perormers or entertainment shows in hotels
and tourist parks Te Pacific was also translated into
countless pictorial variations o noble chies sunsetbeaches dusky maidens palm-tree villages and other
clicheacuted variations o the erotic and picturesque ndash a set
o genres produced by a host o travelling artists
amateur painters and Islanders as well As Sima
Urale demonstrates in her documentary film on
the velvet painter Charles McPhee the heyday o
these popular genres corresponded with the twilight
years o the colonial Pacific when its visual stereotype
reigned unchallenged12
Customary arts were also increasingly bound to
tourism and media spectacle From the late s the
Pacific Islands upgraded or built new airfields and
hotels and linked into international airline routes in
order to capitalize on the economic opportunities o
an expanded tourist industry in the looming lsquojet agersquo
In the first Goroka show was staged in the New
Guinea Highlands as a spectacular event eaturing
some ten thousand native perormers assembled or
dances games mock fights and the like dressed in
dazzling displays o traditional costume Although the
show was conceived by the Australian administration
in order to build regional unity across rival tribal
groups its success was inseparable rom the attendance
o hundreds o European visitors lsquowith expensive
cameras exposure meters and tripodshelliptaking movies
or expensive colour stillsrsquo13 In a similar event the
Mount Hagen show also in New Guinea described by
Pacific Islands Monthly as lsquothe greatest native show on
earthrsquo eatured a staggering seventy thousandparticipants and was attended by over a thousand
European visitors including documentary filmmakers
and editors o international magazines like National
Geographic and American Readerrsquos Digest people
flown in on chartered aircraf14 In other words the
Pacific was bound up in what Guy Debord called the
vast lsquospectaculariz ationrsquo o society in the post-war era
dominated by consumer capitalism in which the
image itsel in a variety o media was the primary
object o production
and stereotyped Pac
spectacle but they w
consumers Te Pacifi
magazines and Islan
Wayne and Mickey M
global lsquoculture indus
lsquospectaclersquo by post-wa
turned into society a
the Pacific
Yet the expansio
commercialization opredominant vehicle
a growing anxiety w
particularly among t
movements or politi
the s and s t
over the production
legacy Consider or
o Māori Arts and Cr
Rotorua had been a t
above left
Savea Malietoa
untitled painting nd
Oil on board 65 x 124 cm
(25 5 frasl 8 x 48 7 frasl 8 in) Courtesy
Maina Afamasaga
Oil paintings of village scenes
and tropical sunsets were
and still are commonplace
in many Samoan homes and
businesses One of Samoarsquos
best and most prolific artists
was Savea Malietoa In this
painting he depicts a faletele
(big house) and modern church
in a village setting
below left
Charlie McPhee untitled oil
painting on velvet c 1960
In 1997 Samoan filmmaker
Sima Urale made a film about
velvet painter Charlie McPhee
who had lived a lsquocolourful lifersquo
in the Pacific seeking pleasure
adventure and women A
lsquomockumentaryrsquo and a tribute
the film used this painting by
the artist as the exemplary
lsquoobject of desirersquo for an era
that was passing
Mount Hagen show 1965
Photograph David BealANTA
State Library NSW Sydney
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358 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
nineteenth century eaturing Māori cultural
perormances tours in geothermal parks and souvenirs
or sale It was also where Sir Apirana Ngata established
the School o Māori Arts and Crafs in which
spearheaded the recovery o the art o carving rom
near oblivion and did much to rehabilitate whare
whakairo (carved and decorated meeting houses) and
Māori ceremonies among tribes and sub-tribes in the
s and s16 Te School had waned afer the war
but was re-established by an Act o Parliament in
as the Institute o Māori Arts and Crafs and placed
under the Department o ourism But while theSchool had managed to balance its services to the
tourist industry with the goals o cultural preservation
the Institute ound itsel increasingly dominated by
tourism It became a closed system producing
qualified carvers to produce high-end souvenirs or
a very limited market effectively centred around the
Institute itsel However in a telling shif the Institute
was criticized by other Māori Some Māori modernists
(to be discussed later in the chapter) saw the Institute
as irrelevant and out o date while Māori academic
Hirini Moko Mead elt that its educational unctions
had been compromised by its placement under the
Department o ourism Pointing to the lsquoenced and
raised walk-wayrsquo provided or tourists to lsquolook down
in saety upon the curiosities working at their benchesrsquo
(see page ) Mead concluded lsquoTe trainees and their
instructor are exhibited like prize animals in a zoorsquo17
Such critiques indicated a new assertiveness about the value and meaning o ind igenous art and culture Te
lull was over
Nationhood the Arts and Cultural Revival
Te drive or independence and political
re-empowerment which galvanized the Pacific rom
the s to the s reocused the relevance o art
and the arts in Oceania Above all the prospect o new
nationhood brought about a dramatic resurgence o
customary culture and tradition recoded in national
terms Te ethos o revival was encapsulated by Sir
Apirana Ngata in (the year New Zealand became
ormally independent rom Great Britain) when he
predicted that lsquoa great uture lay ahead o the Pacificrsquo
and admonished Māori to lsquotake a bigger part in the
economic social and commercial lie o New Zealand
and to keep alive their native traditions and bring about
a full revival of Māori culturersquo 18 Ngatarsquos philosophy
o reviving lsquonative traditionsrsquo while embracing the
conditions o modern nationhood would be echoed by
indigenous leaders across the Pacific as decolonization
became a political reality beginning in the s
Te political history o decolonization is complex
and cannot be ully recounted here but a ew salient
points are worth making One is the dramatic nature
o imperial withdrawal rom the Pacific (as rom other
parts o the world) At the end o the Second World
War the entire region was under some orm o direct
imperial or external rule By the end o the simperial governance had largely been dismantled
leaving in its wake a host o new Pacific states Bar
some exceptions most were ully independent nations
or independent lsquoin ree association withrsquo their ormer
colonial power Where independence had not been
achieved or stalled or ormally rejected those
continuing territories nonetheless enjoyed significantly
greater political autonomy than existed in the pre-war
era19 In other words however qualified by the messy
specificities o particular situations decolonization
was part o a concerted process to restructure the
global political social and economic order
(Decolonization in this sense should not be conused
with myriad struggles against colonialism which
certainly made the most o the opportunities o ormal
decolonization but have much older histories and
continue into the present)
A second point is the uneven incomplete andcontradictory character o decolonization in the
Pacific Te possibility o national independence
was undoubtedly the dominant political ambition o
Pacific leaders though it played out differently across
the region and no simple generalization is possible
In territories administered by anglophone powers
(Britain Australia New Zealand and the United
States) independence was generally agreed upon as
the mutually preerred outcome (However this was
not true in all cases American Samoa and Guam
elected to remain territories o the United States and
there were many people ndash in Fiji onga and Austra lian
New Guinea or example ndash who elt independence was
being oisted on them whether they wanted it or not)
Western Samoa got the ball rolling when it became
independent rom New Zealand administration in
An impressive succession o new states ollowed the
Cook Islands in Nauru in onga and Fiji in
Niue in Papua New Guinea in uvalu
and the Solomon Islands in Vanuatu in
the Marshall Islands and the Federated States o
Micronesia in and Belau in Te list testifies
to the supra-national orces driving decolonization
But it also obscures the difficult business o actually
achieving nationhood and the precarious nature o
many o the states thus created It obscures too the
many disputes ndash about the timing o decolonization
the geography o borders the nature o constitutions
and parliamentary structures the continuedexploitation o islands used as naval bases and nuclear
testing sites in the politics o the Cold War etcetera
ndash that complicated and interered with decolonizationrsquos
inexorable outcome
In the French Pacific independence was a much
more contested objective France saw decolonization
differently to the anglophone powers20 While it
granted French citizenship rights and significant
political autonomy to its Pacific territories soon afer
the Second World War it stopped short o ull
independence and generally opposed and even
obstructed political movements in that direction
seeing decolonization rather as transpiring within
the greater rancophone republic Moreover loyalties
to France among local settler lsquodemirsquo and migrant
populations made the indigenous struggle or
independence a matter o intense and sometimes
violent political dispute Only in the c ase o the NewHebrides (Vanuatu) which France had jointly ruled
with Britain since did a French colony become
ully independent Nationhood and independence
were also complicated in the anglophone settler states
o Hawailsquoi New Zealand and Australia where
nineteenth-century colonization and massive settler
migration had reduced indigenous people to minorities
in their own land Indeed the weight o this history
led to the Hawaiian Islands becoming an American
state in In these places settler withdrawal was
impossible and decolonization played out rather as
a struggle or rights recognition return o illegally
expropriated land and social political and economic
re-empowerment
Te contradictory character o decolonization is
also illustrated by the ate o West Papua ormerly
Netherlands New Guinea which ound itsel caught
up in the opportunis
neighbour Indonesia
Afer winning its ind
Indonesia laid claim
part o its national te
quit the colony and h
disputed the legitima
developed between th
s Recognizing th
rantically strugg led
tasks o sel-governm
national flag o West
was raised in the terr
set or independenceIndonesia pressed its
President Sukarno in
rhetoric against the D
War ears to neutrali
Australia and the Un
the rise o communis
to make an enemy o
threatening to take N
and indeed he invade
With little internatio
to war or the colony
control o West Papu
United Nations ndash to I
renamed it West Iria
to this affair Indones
on sel-government i
circumstances in whi
The Morning Star flag of
independent West Papua
now illegal under
Indonesian law
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE ABELAM ARE ONE OF THE LARGEST
groups in lowland Papua New Guinea They live
in villages of up to 900 people in the foothills of
the Prince Alexander Mountains north of the
Sepik River The Australian administration first
established a government post in their territory in 1937
re-establishing it in 1948 after the Japanese occupation
Thus it was only from the Second World War that the Abelam
were significantly affected by colonial influence and only after
that time that their art came to the attention of the wider world
The energetic brightly painted carvings and paintings made as
part of the long yam cult displayed on and in the cult houses
have since attracted substantial international interest especially
on the part of museums Whole cult house facades and the
carved and woven displays within them have been collected by
a number of museums the Australian Museum and the British
Museum among them A number of anthropologists notably
Anthony Forge and Diane Losche have worked with Abelam
communities and have been drawn by that engagement into
discussing the anthropology of art to questions about the
meaning and significance of specific designs and images
and into broader questions about the nature of art in those
societies where such a category does not exist
Abelam art is displayed in the village in and in front of
menrsquos cult houses Abelam hamlets are built on ridges the
houses are built around a central plaza the forest behind
them Many hamlets have a cult house which towers over
the domestic houses Houses have an A-frame construction
dependent on a long ridge pole supported close to the
ground at the back of the house and sweeping up at the front
cult-house ridge poles can rear up to 18 metres (59 ft) high
The sides of the house sloping away from the ridge pole to
the ground are at the same time its roof thatched with sago
palm leaves The Abelam see the roof-sides of the house as
being like the folded wings of a bird enclosing the space
withini The facade of the cult house is painted in a range of
reds yellows black and white in designs that often represent
the clan spirits or ngwalndu
The long yam cult focuses on the growing display and
exchange of special yams single straight cylindrical tubers
that are carefully and ritually cultivated to reach lengths of
more than 25 or 3 metres (8ndash10 ft) To be a man of substance
a man must be able to grow such yams as the anthropologist
Phyllis Kaberry observed there is a great deal of identification
between a man and his yam there is also a great deal of
identification between the yam and the supernaturalii Initiation
rituals focused on the long yam cult involve the manufacture
of woven and carved painted figures representing clan spirits
which are displayed inside the house decorated with leaves
flowers and fruit This process of making ndash the production
of yams of carvings and paintings ndash draws man and spirit
together The Abelam see paint as crucial to that process
The Abelam do not think about art but about the power
of images and especially of paint itself All Abelam magical
substances are classed as paint various colours being suitable
for various purposes red and a sort of purple the colours of
the substances used for sorcery and long yams are regarded
as the most powerfuliii For the Abelam painting is a sacred
activity in ritual contexts the paint itself is the medium
through which the benefits of the ceremony are transferred
to the initiates and to the village as a whole Paint is t he
essential magical substance of the yam cult LB
Art of the Ab ela m
Decorated menrsquos house
Abelam tribe Sepik District
New Guinea
Photograph Anthony Forge
1962
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356 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
extreme the radical dissemination o Oceanic art
into mass-produced commodities unredeemed by the
quasi-sanctity o the art museum Te phenomenon
was not confined to the United States It extended into
Oceania as well in towns such as Honolulu Papeete
Apia Rotorua Port Vila Agana and elsewhere
Indigenous artists made carvings and handicrafs or
commercial enterprises overseas and Islanders
provided perormers or entertainment shows in hotels
and tourist parks Te Pacific was also translated into
countless pictorial variations o noble chies sunsetbeaches dusky maidens palm-tree villages and other
clicheacuted variations o the erotic and picturesque ndash a set
o genres produced by a host o travelling artists
amateur painters and Islanders as well As Sima
Urale demonstrates in her documentary film on
the velvet painter Charles McPhee the heyday o
these popular genres corresponded with the twilight
years o the colonial Pacific when its visual stereotype
reigned unchallenged12
Customary arts were also increasingly bound to
tourism and media spectacle From the late s the
Pacific Islands upgraded or built new airfields and
hotels and linked into international airline routes in
order to capitalize on the economic opportunities o
an expanded tourist industry in the looming lsquojet agersquo
In the first Goroka show was staged in the New
Guinea Highlands as a spectacular event eaturing
some ten thousand native perormers assembled or
dances games mock fights and the like dressed in
dazzling displays o traditional costume Although the
show was conceived by the Australian administration
in order to build regional unity across rival tribal
groups its success was inseparable rom the attendance
o hundreds o European visitors lsquowith expensive
cameras exposure meters and tripodshelliptaking movies
or expensive colour stillsrsquo13 In a similar event the
Mount Hagen show also in New Guinea described by
Pacific Islands Monthly as lsquothe greatest native show on
earthrsquo eatured a staggering seventy thousandparticipants and was attended by over a thousand
European visitors including documentary filmmakers
and editors o international magazines like National
Geographic and American Readerrsquos Digest people
flown in on chartered aircraf14 In other words the
Pacific was bound up in what Guy Debord called the
vast lsquospectaculariz ationrsquo o society in the post-war era
dominated by consumer capitalism in which the
image itsel in a variety o media was the primary
object o production
and stereotyped Pac
spectacle but they w
consumers Te Pacifi
magazines and Islan
Wayne and Mickey M
global lsquoculture indus
lsquospectaclersquo by post-wa
turned into society a
the Pacific
Yet the expansio
commercialization opredominant vehicle
a growing anxiety w
particularly among t
movements or politi
the s and s t
over the production
legacy Consider or
o Māori Arts and Cr
Rotorua had been a t
above left
Savea Malietoa
untitled painting nd
Oil on board 65 x 124 cm
(25 5 frasl 8 x 48 7 frasl 8 in) Courtesy
Maina Afamasaga
Oil paintings of village scenes
and tropical sunsets were
and still are commonplace
in many Samoan homes and
businesses One of Samoarsquos
best and most prolific artists
was Savea Malietoa In this
painting he depicts a faletele
(big house) and modern church
in a village setting
below left
Charlie McPhee untitled oil
painting on velvet c 1960
In 1997 Samoan filmmaker
Sima Urale made a film about
velvet painter Charlie McPhee
who had lived a lsquocolourful lifersquo
in the Pacific seeking pleasure
adventure and women A
lsquomockumentaryrsquo and a tribute
the film used this painting by
the artist as the exemplary
lsquoobject of desirersquo for an era
that was passing
Mount Hagen show 1965
Photograph David BealANTA
State Library NSW Sydney
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358 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
nineteenth century eaturing Māori cultural
perormances tours in geothermal parks and souvenirs
or sale It was also where Sir Apirana Ngata established
the School o Māori Arts and Crafs in which
spearheaded the recovery o the art o carving rom
near oblivion and did much to rehabilitate whare
whakairo (carved and decorated meeting houses) and
Māori ceremonies among tribes and sub-tribes in the
s and s16 Te School had waned afer the war
but was re-established by an Act o Parliament in
as the Institute o Māori Arts and Crafs and placed
under the Department o ourism But while theSchool had managed to balance its services to the
tourist industry with the goals o cultural preservation
the Institute ound itsel increasingly dominated by
tourism It became a closed system producing
qualified carvers to produce high-end souvenirs or
a very limited market effectively centred around the
Institute itsel However in a telling shif the Institute
was criticized by other Māori Some Māori modernists
(to be discussed later in the chapter) saw the Institute
as irrelevant and out o date while Māori academic
Hirini Moko Mead elt that its educational unctions
had been compromised by its placement under the
Department o ourism Pointing to the lsquoenced and
raised walk-wayrsquo provided or tourists to lsquolook down
in saety upon the curiosities working at their benchesrsquo
(see page ) Mead concluded lsquoTe trainees and their
instructor are exhibited like prize animals in a zoorsquo17
Such critiques indicated a new assertiveness about the value and meaning o ind igenous art and culture Te
lull was over
Nationhood the Arts and Cultural Revival
Te drive or independence and political
re-empowerment which galvanized the Pacific rom
the s to the s reocused the relevance o art
and the arts in Oceania Above all the prospect o new
nationhood brought about a dramatic resurgence o
customary culture and tradition recoded in national
terms Te ethos o revival was encapsulated by Sir
Apirana Ngata in (the year New Zealand became
ormally independent rom Great Britain) when he
predicted that lsquoa great uture lay ahead o the Pacificrsquo
and admonished Māori to lsquotake a bigger part in the
economic social and commercial lie o New Zealand
and to keep alive their native traditions and bring about
a full revival of Māori culturersquo 18 Ngatarsquos philosophy
o reviving lsquonative traditionsrsquo while embracing the
conditions o modern nationhood would be echoed by
indigenous leaders across the Pacific as decolonization
became a political reality beginning in the s
Te political history o decolonization is complex
and cannot be ully recounted here but a ew salient
points are worth making One is the dramatic nature
o imperial withdrawal rom the Pacific (as rom other
parts o the world) At the end o the Second World
War the entire region was under some orm o direct
imperial or external rule By the end o the simperial governance had largely been dismantled
leaving in its wake a host o new Pacific states Bar
some exceptions most were ully independent nations
or independent lsquoin ree association withrsquo their ormer
colonial power Where independence had not been
achieved or stalled or ormally rejected those
continuing territories nonetheless enjoyed significantly
greater political autonomy than existed in the pre-war
era19 In other words however qualified by the messy
specificities o particular situations decolonization
was part o a concerted process to restructure the
global political social and economic order
(Decolonization in this sense should not be conused
with myriad struggles against colonialism which
certainly made the most o the opportunities o ormal
decolonization but have much older histories and
continue into the present)
A second point is the uneven incomplete andcontradictory character o decolonization in the
Pacific Te possibility o national independence
was undoubtedly the dominant political ambition o
Pacific leaders though it played out differently across
the region and no simple generalization is possible
In territories administered by anglophone powers
(Britain Australia New Zealand and the United
States) independence was generally agreed upon as
the mutually preerred outcome (However this was
not true in all cases American Samoa and Guam
elected to remain territories o the United States and
there were many people ndash in Fiji onga and Austra lian
New Guinea or example ndash who elt independence was
being oisted on them whether they wanted it or not)
Western Samoa got the ball rolling when it became
independent rom New Zealand administration in
An impressive succession o new states ollowed the
Cook Islands in Nauru in onga and Fiji in
Niue in Papua New Guinea in uvalu
and the Solomon Islands in Vanuatu in
the Marshall Islands and the Federated States o
Micronesia in and Belau in Te list testifies
to the supra-national orces driving decolonization
But it also obscures the difficult business o actually
achieving nationhood and the precarious nature o
many o the states thus created It obscures too the
many disputes ndash about the timing o decolonization
the geography o borders the nature o constitutions
and parliamentary structures the continuedexploitation o islands used as naval bases and nuclear
testing sites in the politics o the Cold War etcetera
ndash that complicated and interered with decolonizationrsquos
inexorable outcome
In the French Pacific independence was a much
more contested objective France saw decolonization
differently to the anglophone powers20 While it
granted French citizenship rights and significant
political autonomy to its Pacific territories soon afer
the Second World War it stopped short o ull
independence and generally opposed and even
obstructed political movements in that direction
seeing decolonization rather as transpiring within
the greater rancophone republic Moreover loyalties
to France among local settler lsquodemirsquo and migrant
populations made the indigenous struggle or
independence a matter o intense and sometimes
violent political dispute Only in the c ase o the NewHebrides (Vanuatu) which France had jointly ruled
with Britain since did a French colony become
ully independent Nationhood and independence
were also complicated in the anglophone settler states
o Hawailsquoi New Zealand and Australia where
nineteenth-century colonization and massive settler
migration had reduced indigenous people to minorities
in their own land Indeed the weight o this history
led to the Hawaiian Islands becoming an American
state in In these places settler withdrawal was
impossible and decolonization played out rather as
a struggle or rights recognition return o illegally
expropriated land and social political and economic
re-empowerment
Te contradictory character o decolonization is
also illustrated by the ate o West Papua ormerly
Netherlands New Guinea which ound itsel caught
up in the opportunis
neighbour Indonesia
Afer winning its ind
Indonesia laid claim
part o its national te
quit the colony and h
disputed the legitima
developed between th
s Recognizing th
rantically strugg led
tasks o sel-governm
national flag o West
was raised in the terr
set or independenceIndonesia pressed its
President Sukarno in
rhetoric against the D
War ears to neutrali
Australia and the Un
the rise o communis
to make an enemy o
threatening to take N
and indeed he invade
With little internatio
to war or the colony
control o West Papu
United Nations ndash to I
renamed it West Iria
to this affair Indones
on sel-government i
circumstances in whi
The Morning Star flag of
independent West Papua
now illegal under
Indonesian law
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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356 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
extreme the radical dissemination o Oceanic art
into mass-produced commodities unredeemed by the
quasi-sanctity o the art museum Te phenomenon
was not confined to the United States It extended into
Oceania as well in towns such as Honolulu Papeete
Apia Rotorua Port Vila Agana and elsewhere
Indigenous artists made carvings and handicrafs or
commercial enterprises overseas and Islanders
provided perormers or entertainment shows in hotels
and tourist parks Te Pacific was also translated into
countless pictorial variations o noble chies sunsetbeaches dusky maidens palm-tree villages and other
clicheacuted variations o the erotic and picturesque ndash a set
o genres produced by a host o travelling artists
amateur painters and Islanders as well As Sima
Urale demonstrates in her documentary film on
the velvet painter Charles McPhee the heyday o
these popular genres corresponded with the twilight
years o the colonial Pacific when its visual stereotype
reigned unchallenged12
Customary arts were also increasingly bound to
tourism and media spectacle From the late s the
Pacific Islands upgraded or built new airfields and
hotels and linked into international airline routes in
order to capitalize on the economic opportunities o
an expanded tourist industry in the looming lsquojet agersquo
In the first Goroka show was staged in the New
Guinea Highlands as a spectacular event eaturing
some ten thousand native perormers assembled or
dances games mock fights and the like dressed in
dazzling displays o traditional costume Although the
show was conceived by the Australian administration
in order to build regional unity across rival tribal
groups its success was inseparable rom the attendance
o hundreds o European visitors lsquowith expensive
cameras exposure meters and tripodshelliptaking movies
or expensive colour stillsrsquo13 In a similar event the
Mount Hagen show also in New Guinea described by
Pacific Islands Monthly as lsquothe greatest native show on
earthrsquo eatured a staggering seventy thousandparticipants and was attended by over a thousand
European visitors including documentary filmmakers
and editors o international magazines like National
Geographic and American Readerrsquos Digest people
flown in on chartered aircraf14 In other words the
Pacific was bound up in what Guy Debord called the
vast lsquospectaculariz ationrsquo o society in the post-war era
dominated by consumer capitalism in which the
image itsel in a variety o media was the primary
object o production
and stereotyped Pac
spectacle but they w
consumers Te Pacifi
magazines and Islan
Wayne and Mickey M
global lsquoculture indus
lsquospectaclersquo by post-wa
turned into society a
the Pacific
Yet the expansio
commercialization opredominant vehicle
a growing anxiety w
particularly among t
movements or politi
the s and s t
over the production
legacy Consider or
o Māori Arts and Cr
Rotorua had been a t
above left
Savea Malietoa
untitled painting nd
Oil on board 65 x 124 cm
(25 5 frasl 8 x 48 7 frasl 8 in) Courtesy
Maina Afamasaga
Oil paintings of village scenes
and tropical sunsets were
and still are commonplace
in many Samoan homes and
businesses One of Samoarsquos
best and most prolific artists
was Savea Malietoa In this
painting he depicts a faletele
(big house) and modern church
in a village setting
below left
Charlie McPhee untitled oil
painting on velvet c 1960
In 1997 Samoan filmmaker
Sima Urale made a film about
velvet painter Charlie McPhee
who had lived a lsquocolourful lifersquo
in the Pacific seeking pleasure
adventure and women A
lsquomockumentaryrsquo and a tribute
the film used this painting by
the artist as the exemplary
lsquoobject of desirersquo for an era
that was passing
Mount Hagen show 1965
Photograph David BealANTA
State Library NSW Sydney
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358 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
nineteenth century eaturing Māori cultural
perormances tours in geothermal parks and souvenirs
or sale It was also where Sir Apirana Ngata established
the School o Māori Arts and Crafs in which
spearheaded the recovery o the art o carving rom
near oblivion and did much to rehabilitate whare
whakairo (carved and decorated meeting houses) and
Māori ceremonies among tribes and sub-tribes in the
s and s16 Te School had waned afer the war
but was re-established by an Act o Parliament in
as the Institute o Māori Arts and Crafs and placed
under the Department o ourism But while theSchool had managed to balance its services to the
tourist industry with the goals o cultural preservation
the Institute ound itsel increasingly dominated by
tourism It became a closed system producing
qualified carvers to produce high-end souvenirs or
a very limited market effectively centred around the
Institute itsel However in a telling shif the Institute
was criticized by other Māori Some Māori modernists
(to be discussed later in the chapter) saw the Institute
as irrelevant and out o date while Māori academic
Hirini Moko Mead elt that its educational unctions
had been compromised by its placement under the
Department o ourism Pointing to the lsquoenced and
raised walk-wayrsquo provided or tourists to lsquolook down
in saety upon the curiosities working at their benchesrsquo
(see page ) Mead concluded lsquoTe trainees and their
instructor are exhibited like prize animals in a zoorsquo17
Such critiques indicated a new assertiveness about the value and meaning o ind igenous art and culture Te
lull was over
Nationhood the Arts and Cultural Revival
Te drive or independence and political
re-empowerment which galvanized the Pacific rom
the s to the s reocused the relevance o art
and the arts in Oceania Above all the prospect o new
nationhood brought about a dramatic resurgence o
customary culture and tradition recoded in national
terms Te ethos o revival was encapsulated by Sir
Apirana Ngata in (the year New Zealand became
ormally independent rom Great Britain) when he
predicted that lsquoa great uture lay ahead o the Pacificrsquo
and admonished Māori to lsquotake a bigger part in the
economic social and commercial lie o New Zealand
and to keep alive their native traditions and bring about
a full revival of Māori culturersquo 18 Ngatarsquos philosophy
o reviving lsquonative traditionsrsquo while embracing the
conditions o modern nationhood would be echoed by
indigenous leaders across the Pacific as decolonization
became a political reality beginning in the s
Te political history o decolonization is complex
and cannot be ully recounted here but a ew salient
points are worth making One is the dramatic nature
o imperial withdrawal rom the Pacific (as rom other
parts o the world) At the end o the Second World
War the entire region was under some orm o direct
imperial or external rule By the end o the simperial governance had largely been dismantled
leaving in its wake a host o new Pacific states Bar
some exceptions most were ully independent nations
or independent lsquoin ree association withrsquo their ormer
colonial power Where independence had not been
achieved or stalled or ormally rejected those
continuing territories nonetheless enjoyed significantly
greater political autonomy than existed in the pre-war
era19 In other words however qualified by the messy
specificities o particular situations decolonization
was part o a concerted process to restructure the
global political social and economic order
(Decolonization in this sense should not be conused
with myriad struggles against colonialism which
certainly made the most o the opportunities o ormal
decolonization but have much older histories and
continue into the present)
A second point is the uneven incomplete andcontradictory character o decolonization in the
Pacific Te possibility o national independence
was undoubtedly the dominant political ambition o
Pacific leaders though it played out differently across
the region and no simple generalization is possible
In territories administered by anglophone powers
(Britain Australia New Zealand and the United
States) independence was generally agreed upon as
the mutually preerred outcome (However this was
not true in all cases American Samoa and Guam
elected to remain territories o the United States and
there were many people ndash in Fiji onga and Austra lian
New Guinea or example ndash who elt independence was
being oisted on them whether they wanted it or not)
Western Samoa got the ball rolling when it became
independent rom New Zealand administration in
An impressive succession o new states ollowed the
Cook Islands in Nauru in onga and Fiji in
Niue in Papua New Guinea in uvalu
and the Solomon Islands in Vanuatu in
the Marshall Islands and the Federated States o
Micronesia in and Belau in Te list testifies
to the supra-national orces driving decolonization
But it also obscures the difficult business o actually
achieving nationhood and the precarious nature o
many o the states thus created It obscures too the
many disputes ndash about the timing o decolonization
the geography o borders the nature o constitutions
and parliamentary structures the continuedexploitation o islands used as naval bases and nuclear
testing sites in the politics o the Cold War etcetera
ndash that complicated and interered with decolonizationrsquos
inexorable outcome
In the French Pacific independence was a much
more contested objective France saw decolonization
differently to the anglophone powers20 While it
granted French citizenship rights and significant
political autonomy to its Pacific territories soon afer
the Second World War it stopped short o ull
independence and generally opposed and even
obstructed political movements in that direction
seeing decolonization rather as transpiring within
the greater rancophone republic Moreover loyalties
to France among local settler lsquodemirsquo and migrant
populations made the indigenous struggle or
independence a matter o intense and sometimes
violent political dispute Only in the c ase o the NewHebrides (Vanuatu) which France had jointly ruled
with Britain since did a French colony become
ully independent Nationhood and independence
were also complicated in the anglophone settler states
o Hawailsquoi New Zealand and Australia where
nineteenth-century colonization and massive settler
migration had reduced indigenous people to minorities
in their own land Indeed the weight o this history
led to the Hawaiian Islands becoming an American
state in In these places settler withdrawal was
impossible and decolonization played out rather as
a struggle or rights recognition return o illegally
expropriated land and social political and economic
re-empowerment
Te contradictory character o decolonization is
also illustrated by the ate o West Papua ormerly
Netherlands New Guinea which ound itsel caught
up in the opportunis
neighbour Indonesia
Afer winning its ind
Indonesia laid claim
part o its national te
quit the colony and h
disputed the legitima
developed between th
s Recognizing th
rantically strugg led
tasks o sel-governm
national flag o West
was raised in the terr
set or independenceIndonesia pressed its
President Sukarno in
rhetoric against the D
War ears to neutrali
Australia and the Un
the rise o communis
to make an enemy o
threatening to take N
and indeed he invade
With little internatio
to war or the colony
control o West Papu
United Nations ndash to I
renamed it West Iria
to this affair Indones
on sel-government i
circumstances in whi
The Morning Star flag of
independent West Papua
now illegal under
Indonesian law
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
7242019 Art in Oceania
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
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httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1823
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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358 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
nineteenth century eaturing Māori cultural
perormances tours in geothermal parks and souvenirs
or sale It was also where Sir Apirana Ngata established
the School o Māori Arts and Crafs in which
spearheaded the recovery o the art o carving rom
near oblivion and did much to rehabilitate whare
whakairo (carved and decorated meeting houses) and
Māori ceremonies among tribes and sub-tribes in the
s and s16 Te School had waned afer the war
but was re-established by an Act o Parliament in
as the Institute o Māori Arts and Crafs and placed
under the Department o ourism But while theSchool had managed to balance its services to the
tourist industry with the goals o cultural preservation
the Institute ound itsel increasingly dominated by
tourism It became a closed system producing
qualified carvers to produce high-end souvenirs or
a very limited market effectively centred around the
Institute itsel However in a telling shif the Institute
was criticized by other Māori Some Māori modernists
(to be discussed later in the chapter) saw the Institute
as irrelevant and out o date while Māori academic
Hirini Moko Mead elt that its educational unctions
had been compromised by its placement under the
Department o ourism Pointing to the lsquoenced and
raised walk-wayrsquo provided or tourists to lsquolook down
in saety upon the curiosities working at their benchesrsquo
(see page ) Mead concluded lsquoTe trainees and their
instructor are exhibited like prize animals in a zoorsquo17
Such critiques indicated a new assertiveness about the value and meaning o ind igenous art and culture Te
lull was over
Nationhood the Arts and Cultural Revival
Te drive or independence and political
re-empowerment which galvanized the Pacific rom
the s to the s reocused the relevance o art
and the arts in Oceania Above all the prospect o new
nationhood brought about a dramatic resurgence o
customary culture and tradition recoded in national
terms Te ethos o revival was encapsulated by Sir
Apirana Ngata in (the year New Zealand became
ormally independent rom Great Britain) when he
predicted that lsquoa great uture lay ahead o the Pacificrsquo
and admonished Māori to lsquotake a bigger part in the
economic social and commercial lie o New Zealand
and to keep alive their native traditions and bring about
a full revival of Māori culturersquo 18 Ngatarsquos philosophy
o reviving lsquonative traditionsrsquo while embracing the
conditions o modern nationhood would be echoed by
indigenous leaders across the Pacific as decolonization
became a political reality beginning in the s
Te political history o decolonization is complex
and cannot be ully recounted here but a ew salient
points are worth making One is the dramatic nature
o imperial withdrawal rom the Pacific (as rom other
parts o the world) At the end o the Second World
War the entire region was under some orm o direct
imperial or external rule By the end o the simperial governance had largely been dismantled
leaving in its wake a host o new Pacific states Bar
some exceptions most were ully independent nations
or independent lsquoin ree association withrsquo their ormer
colonial power Where independence had not been
achieved or stalled or ormally rejected those
continuing territories nonetheless enjoyed significantly
greater political autonomy than existed in the pre-war
era19 In other words however qualified by the messy
specificities o particular situations decolonization
was part o a concerted process to restructure the
global political social and economic order
(Decolonization in this sense should not be conused
with myriad struggles against colonialism which
certainly made the most o the opportunities o ormal
decolonization but have much older histories and
continue into the present)
A second point is the uneven incomplete andcontradictory character o decolonization in the
Pacific Te possibility o national independence
was undoubtedly the dominant political ambition o
Pacific leaders though it played out differently across
the region and no simple generalization is possible
In territories administered by anglophone powers
(Britain Australia New Zealand and the United
States) independence was generally agreed upon as
the mutually preerred outcome (However this was
not true in all cases American Samoa and Guam
elected to remain territories o the United States and
there were many people ndash in Fiji onga and Austra lian
New Guinea or example ndash who elt independence was
being oisted on them whether they wanted it or not)
Western Samoa got the ball rolling when it became
independent rom New Zealand administration in
An impressive succession o new states ollowed the
Cook Islands in Nauru in onga and Fiji in
Niue in Papua New Guinea in uvalu
and the Solomon Islands in Vanuatu in
the Marshall Islands and the Federated States o
Micronesia in and Belau in Te list testifies
to the supra-national orces driving decolonization
But it also obscures the difficult business o actually
achieving nationhood and the precarious nature o
many o the states thus created It obscures too the
many disputes ndash about the timing o decolonization
the geography o borders the nature o constitutions
and parliamentary structures the continuedexploitation o islands used as naval bases and nuclear
testing sites in the politics o the Cold War etcetera
ndash that complicated and interered with decolonizationrsquos
inexorable outcome
In the French Pacific independence was a much
more contested objective France saw decolonization
differently to the anglophone powers20 While it
granted French citizenship rights and significant
political autonomy to its Pacific territories soon afer
the Second World War it stopped short o ull
independence and generally opposed and even
obstructed political movements in that direction
seeing decolonization rather as transpiring within
the greater rancophone republic Moreover loyalties
to France among local settler lsquodemirsquo and migrant
populations made the indigenous struggle or
independence a matter o intense and sometimes
violent political dispute Only in the c ase o the NewHebrides (Vanuatu) which France had jointly ruled
with Britain since did a French colony become
ully independent Nationhood and independence
were also complicated in the anglophone settler states
o Hawailsquoi New Zealand and Australia where
nineteenth-century colonization and massive settler
migration had reduced indigenous people to minorities
in their own land Indeed the weight o this history
led to the Hawaiian Islands becoming an American
state in In these places settler withdrawal was
impossible and decolonization played out rather as
a struggle or rights recognition return o illegally
expropriated land and social political and economic
re-empowerment
Te contradictory character o decolonization is
also illustrated by the ate o West Papua ormerly
Netherlands New Guinea which ound itsel caught
up in the opportunis
neighbour Indonesia
Afer winning its ind
Indonesia laid claim
part o its national te
quit the colony and h
disputed the legitima
developed between th
s Recognizing th
rantically strugg led
tasks o sel-governm
national flag o West
was raised in the terr
set or independenceIndonesia pressed its
President Sukarno in
rhetoric against the D
War ears to neutrali
Australia and the Un
the rise o communis
to make an enemy o
threatening to take N
and indeed he invade
With little internatio
to war or the colony
control o West Papu
United Nations ndash to I
renamed it West Iria
to this affair Indones
on sel-government i
circumstances in whi
The Morning Star flag of
independent West Papua
now illegal under
Indonesian law
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F
E
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U
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E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
7242019 Art in Oceania
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1823
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
F
RO M 1946 T O 1996 the American British
and French governments conducted atomic and
hydrogen bomb testing in the atolls and islands of
Micronesia and Polynesia Nuclear testing destroyed
environments and contaminated ecosystems already
struggling to recover from the effects of the Second World War
In the 1950s international calls began for nuclear disarmam ent
and by the 1970s activist groups such as Greenpeace had
initiated highly visible protest campaigns within the region
and the international media In the post-war period the visual
art generated by these protest movements played on iconic
tourist images and the vocabulary of the mass media
No Nukes in the Pacific (1984) is a memorable example
of the type of visual a rt produced by individuals and groups
opposed to nuclear testing Made by Australian artist Pam
Debenham the shirt in this po ster was inspired by one of
the rarest Hawaiian-style shirts from the 1950s supposedly
produced in celebration of the United States testing on Bikini
Atoll In Debenhamrsquos version of the Hawaiian shirt the fabric
design is dominated by mushroom clouds each titled with
the name of a nuclear testing site from across the region The
distinctive atomic explosions over the atolls of Moruroa Bikini
Enewetak rise above the coconut palms and islets of the blue
ocean The protest yacht Pacific Peacemaker sails between
these sites signifying the voyages it made with a multinational
crew in 1982
The image of the shirt is ambiguous Is it a celebration
or a protest Is the tanned person wearing it an Islander or
a tourist The face is cropped from the image so we donrsquot
know their identity The juxtaposition of the iconic Hawaiian
shirt and atomic explosions evoke another tourist icon ndash the
bikini The irony is that both garments are made for the
tourist to cover the touristrsquos body and mark or celebrate a
fleeting moment or experience of the Pacific in doing so both
garments obscure the infamous history of Bikini Atoll as a key
site in the history of nuclear testing and the displacement and
suffering of Pacific people
The visual art and culture of anti-nuclear protest took
form in a range of popular media including banners T-shirts
button badges and pins These were accessible mass-
produced objects easily disseminated and effective
in conveying important political messages Slogans such
as lsquoIf itrsquos Safe ndash Test it in Paris Dump it in Tokyo and Keep
our Pacific Nuclear Freersquo lsquoBan the Bombrsquo and lsquoStop French
Testingrsquo were key slogans of the anti-nuclear movement
Mass media were critical to the success of anti-nuclear
activists However indigenous artists such as Ralph Hotere
have been inspired to respond to the nuclear threat through
their art and have exhibited in gallerie s within and beyond
the Pacific The work of these activists and artists has drawn
worldwide attention to the environmental costs of nuclear
testing in the Pacific region and put pressure on governments
about their activities
In the nuclear age the re gionrsquos peoples would confront
a new set of political cultural a nd environmental challenges
In the post-war period of decolonization in the Pacific nuclear
testing galvanized indigenous resistance toward colonial
powers Pacific governments rallied on anti-nuclear issues
when few other issues can this is what has brought them
together with a common cause A significant achievement
was the Treaty of Rarotonga (1985) prohibiting the location
or testing of nuclear weapons in the region
In the twenty-first century concerns about nuclear
energy and its risks remain high on the agenda of the regionrsquos
environmental activists Nuclear-powered navy vessels still s ail
on and under the Pacific Oceanrsquos surface Uranium ore is still
moved between the regionrsquos ports For some experts nuclear
technology is the answer to servicing the planetrsquos future energy
needs The art of protest and activism remains important in
asking questions and maintaining vigilance SM
No Nukes in the Pacif ic
Pam Debenham
No Nukes in the Pacific 1984
Screenprint poster 88 x 62 cm
(34 5 frasl 8 x 24 3 frasl 8 in) Image
courtesy of the artist
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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362 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
Papuans lsquovotedrsquo on behal o the entire population to
remain part o Indonesia Although bitterly condemned
by Papuans as the lsquoact o no choicersquo the reerendum was
controversially ratified by the United Nations (with the
support o the United States) thus sea ling West Papuarsquos
ate as a province o Indonesia Decoloniz ation in the
Pacific had not got off to a good start 22
Te subject o art in the context o these complex
political histories was both central and marginal
Nations are obviously more than the machinery o
modern states Tey depend on the mediation o
material signs and symbols and the affects and ideasthey are designed (or co-opted) to evoke or
communicate about the nation New nations orced
more or less willingly into being are aced in addition
with the task o bridging their past and their historical
novelty Every new Pacific nation every movement or
national sovereignty emerging rom the colonial era
aced this troublesome challenge Te Morning Star
flag or example galvanized West Papuan hopes or
independence in December using the most
conventional o modern national symbols the flag
Tat flag however was banned by Indonesia when
it took control o the country in and has since
become the rebel sign o dissident nationalism in
the province the sy mbol o West Papuarsquos stolen
nationhood all the more powerul or the absence
o that which it had been promised by the Dutch
Conversely Indonesia was aced with the enormous
task o remaking this strange culturally heterogeneousand as they were thought o at the time still lsquoprimitiversquo
people into lsquoIndonesiansrsquo Among its strategies in the
s was to suppress the role o art in many o the
countryrsquos tribal groups It banned customary body
adornments such as penis gourds worn by the Dani
people in the Baliem valley prohibited traditional
easts estivals and rituals among the Asmat and
systematically destroyed Asmat carvings and menrsquos
houses23 ndash iconoclastic strategies both colonial and
modern that aim to erase tradition creating a blank
slate on which a new national consciousness may
be written Tus in Sukarno commissioned
a series o national monuments in Jakarta the
capital o Indonesia to commemorate the origins
o Indonesiarsquos modern nationhood in a narrative o
anti-colonial struggle against the Dutch Among
them was a monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo o West Irian
a bronze statue o a man o ambiguous identity (is
he Papuan Indonesian both or neither) exclaiming
his reedom rom oppression with his arms
outstretched and broken chains dangling rom his
wrists and ankles
As the momentum o indigenous decolonization
picked up in the Pacific rom the s the semaphore
o postcolonial nationhood turned increasingly to the
sanction o customary culture translated into national
terms As already noted the arts in the immediate
postwar years were in a somewhat nebulous state
dispersed in the opportunities o commercialproduction dominated by oreign discourses about
lsquoprimitive artrsquo politically unocused and uncertain
o their uture Many arts had been suppressed or
were lost under colonial rule or abandoned in the
wake o Christian conversion Lacheret Dioposoi a
contemporary Kanak carver rom New Caledonia or
example recalls the complete absence o carving in his
country until the s and s lsquoNothing nothing
nothing at all you donrsquot find any carving between
the arrival o the whites and the s or rsquosrsquo24 Te
promise o nationhood changed this situation giving
rise to concerted efforts to revive lost or languishing
art orms For example Dioposoi and French
anthropologist Roger Boulay (among others) began to
compile a complete photographic inventory o Kanak
sculpture scattered in the worldrsquos museums with the
idea that the resultin
or a contemporary r
Similarly Kanak
jibaou conceived an
cultural estival in N
Caledonia called lsquoM
participants and orw
o the estival was bo
aimed to counteract
previous decades to
the Kanak population
those decades lsquoTesemisortune when it w
deep crisis chefferies
tribes abandoned alo
are some people who
French citizens in th
this had become the
humanityhellip In act
thingsrsquo25 In its attem
gathered Kanaks rom
or several days o cu
perormances tradit
an epic theatrical pro
history o New Caled
o the estival was als
the Kanak populatio
o Noumea in order
identity and also bro
basis o a mounting cindependence It was
but one turned to po
on a big show a reall
Te aim o lsquoMelanesi
on our culture or the
Melanesians involved
where they would lea
to their own heritage
Pacific the arts were
purpose In Decembe
independence Vanu
Arts Festival as lsquoa rea
preserving and devel
tradition as a means
and to show lsquoto t he w
But attitudes to c
shifing across multip
Roger Boulay Sculptures
Kanak documentation
project Office Culturel
Scientifique et Technique
Canaque New Caledonia
1984
Monument to the liberation of West Irian Jakarta Indonesia
bronze 1963
Sculptor Edhi Sunarso designer Frederik Silaban
No modern sculpture in the Pacific captures the irony and
contradictions of decolonization in the region better than this
monument to the lsquoliberationrsquo of West Irian now the Indonesian
province of West Papua
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1623
372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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364 P A R T F I V E
signalling a broad ideological sea change While
colonial attitudes still persisted (to be broken down)
the revival and preservationist aspirations o Islanders
increasingly converged with the decolonizing objectives
o international organizations departing empires
reorming Churches publicity-conscious corporations
and new nation states ndash all seeking ways to
accommodate the postcolonial uture lsquoMelanesia rsquo
it should be noted in this context was staged with the
aid o French unding Indonesia reversed its draconian
policy towards Asmat culture in the late s
permitting the United Nations to establish the United
Nations Asmat Art Project in 1968 and a group o
Catholic missionaries to establish the Asmat Museum
o Progress and Culture in In the South Pacific
Commission an alliance o states overseeing regional
development inaugurated the quadrennial South
Pacific Festival o Arts (later the Pacific Festival o Arts)
in Suva Fiji which enshrined the ethos o cultural
preservation and identity as a national theme across
the region ( pages ndash ) New museums and cultural
centres established across the region at various points
afer the Second World War signalled the same idea
the imperative to preserve traditional arts as part o a
national heritage28 In the sailing o the Hōkūlelsquoa
between Hawailsquoi and ahiti re-enacted the ancient art
top
Scene from stage play Kanakeacute written
by Georges Dobbelaere and Jean-Marie
Tjibaou for the festival lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo
New Caledonia 1975
lsquoThe dance of the arrival of the Whitesrsquo from
the historical pageant Kanakeacute The Whites
are played by masked Melanesians while
behind them are giant figures representing th e
missionary the merchant and the m ilitary officer
above
Jean-Marie Tjibaou at the festival
lsquoMelanesia 2000rsquo New Caledonia 1975
lsquo B U T W H A T I S A L S O V I T A L
The present situation that Melanesians in New C
through is one of transition characterized by mu
elements of modernity are there but we lack mod
traditional and the modern So it is a time of deba
for modernity and the fear of losing onersquos identity
be a long one and we shall have to overcome thi
symbiosis between the traditional and the moder
by the force of things The new forms of express
material sounds come out of the guitar for exam
specifically Melanesian poetic or contemporary t
way the manous [traditional skirts] the rhythmic
decorative powders the harmonica and the drum
dances our pilous all these draw modernity into
Less obviously perhaps we are incorporating ele
around us into our choreography
Finally there is use of linguistic material ndash French
English ndash in poems and songs alongside borrow
cultures You could say that there is movement b
an historic scale to win for itself a new identity b
mobilizing borrowed material elements and using
the universal culture on offer everywhere but esp
We should doubtless be looking to a new floweri
creation which will set new models with t heir roo
but adapted to the contemporary environment of
is that of the town A long with regular pay accult
frame of reference is vital But what is also vital is
ourselves an environment in which the mode rn is
breathed into us by the ancestors without which
with our roots
Jean-Marie
From an in
Jean-Marie Tjibaou (1936ndash1
of the Kanak Independen
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
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366 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
o Polynesian voyaging urther galvanizing (through
much publicity) a region-wide pride in the heritage o
the past Te upshot o all this was a proound reversal
in the status o customar y culture lsquoKastomrsquo as it is
called in island Melanesia went rom its colonial
meaning o old ways and old t hings given up in the
process o Christian conversion or mission schooling
to a postcolonial term implying cultural sanction
and legitimation29
Yet behind this theatre o revivified customs
and traditions lay many conflicts and tensions Te
resurgence ofen sat awkwardly with the complex
social realities o post-war Oceania with the expanded
currents o migration and urbanization or example
rom rural villages into towns and cities rom small
islands into large Westernized and industrialized
countries between islands in the region and into
the islands rom places like France Japan South
Asia and Southeast Asia Te rhetoric o revival also
expressed an ongoing anxiety about the massive
inroads o commercialization in the Pacific including
that o the arts As stated in the programme o the
South Pacific Festival o Arts lsquostrenuous efforts are
needed to prevent these age-old arts rom succumbing
to the pervading sense o sameness that exists in much
o our society o being swamped by commercialism
or cheapened to provide mere entertainment or
touristsrsquo30 Te authority o custom and tradition also
played a significant role in the nature o the hybrid
democracies being created in the Pacific empowering
traditional chies and educated elites Te elevation
o customary art orms to national traditions ofen
reflected particular class and political attitudes while
glossing over historical losses and social differences
Consider or exa
Narokobi a Papua N
during a symposium
Guinea in the ye
independent rom Au
Nationalismrsquo the lec
staged at the Creativ
entitled lsquoTe Seized C
rom among thousan
at ports in Madang W
destined or ma
States (overleaf ) OrdMichael Somare in th
police raids were des
illegal trade in cultur
intend to stop the tra
that Papua New Guin
profits) Contemplati
remarked on their ro
o local communities
origin in police raids
oday no true s
a glimpse into th
got by an awaren
a single work o
becomes a being
clan A mask bec
great deeds o th
colours rom the
centre place or m
Trough their fin
communicate wi
their art they rea
From this idealized a
depredations o mod
be seen as lsquospiritual d
At this historical
orms o art conv
bare artistic style
desperate search
unity we might c
paperbacks and d
representations o
orms Nothing c
more than to em
and-Indian or th
South Pacific Festival of Arts
poster 1972
National Library of Australia
Canberra
South Pacific Festival of Arts
1980 Port Moresby
Papua New Guinea
Photograph Gil Hanly
7242019 Art in Oceania
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1623
372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1823
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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368 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
In act Narokobi is in two minds about the value o
these popular cultural orms Having condemned them
as lsquospiritual deathrsquo he considers the possibility o
embracing them recast with the content o Papua New
Guinearsquos vast cultural legacy
Our myths legends and histories are enough to
provide material or millions o novels comic strips
and cheap films that will make Cowboy-and-Indian
and Kung Fu films look unimportant34
But the suggestion is only hal-hearted In the end
Narokobi upholds these traditional arts as the lsquogenuine
artrsquo o Papua New Guinea by virtue o the social and
spiritual role they served He then admonishes its
contemporary artists to create lsquonew orms o
expressionrsquo that remain true to these spiritual and
communal purposes but with respect to the nation
Tat challenge was taken up in its own way by another
strand o art-making in the Pacific more secular in
its orientation but no less ambivalent about artrsquos high
calling and its troubled place in modern society
Modernism and the lsquoNew Oceaniarsquo
Tese were practices influenced by Western
modernism Te latter enters the post-war Pacific
primarily through its large anglophone settler states
ndash Australia New Zealand and Hawailsquoi ndash where settler
cultures had established art galleries art societies
and art collections in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries laying claim to the legacy o
European lsquohigh culturersquo as a civilizing influence in
the colonial situation Tese settler lsquoart worldsrsquo
provided the context or the emergence o indigenous
modernisms in the s and s Elsewhere in the
Pacific where there were no lsquoart worldsrsquo in the Western
sense the advent o modernist practices was more
improvised and sporadic though no less significant
or post-war nationhood
Several social actors contributed to this
development One was the nurture provided by the
establishment o tertiary educational institutions
Te late s saw the inauguration o the University
o Papua New Guinea the University o the South
Pacific in Suva Fiji (with satellite campuses in other
islands) and the University o Guam Along with
universities and teacher-training colleges in New
Zealand Australia and Hawailsquoi these institutions
provided a milieu that cultivated a variety o
experimental ventures into art literature and theatre
ndash art orms derived rom the West but used to express
a contemporary postcolonial consciousness Te first
exhibition o modernist Māori art in New Zealand
or example was held at the Adult Education Centre
Auckland in organized by Matiu e Hau who
worked or Continuing Education at the University
o Auckland35 Te exhibition showed the work o five
Māori artists ndash Selwyn Wilson Ralph Hotere Katerina
Mataira Muru Walters and Arnold Wilson ndash all o
whom had been educated either in teacher-training
colleges or university art schools Other exhibitions
such as the one held at the Hamilton Festival o Māori
Arts in ollowed Similarly the new Pacific
universities became hubs or a variety o new artistic
expressions mounting exhibitions staging plays
publishing literary journals holding art workshops
and so on
Another actor was post-war urbanization All o
the Māori modernists exhibited in were urban
migrants rom rural backgrounds Te same was true
in a different sense o the first contemporary artists in
Papua New Guinea ndash
within the ambit o t
either as villagers wh
as adults or as part o
imothy Akis or ex
sembaga in the Sim
generation o contact
was brought to Port M
Georgeda Buchbinde
remarkable drawings
Mathias Kauage was
Highlands ndash another
with Europeans ndash wh
on his own account w
contrast Ruki Fame
alienated rom their
afer their villages ha
renounced their resp
at various jobs in Por
by nuns worked as a
Hamilton Festival of Maori
Arts August 1966
Archives New Zealand
Wellington
A pioneering group of Maori
artists familiar with the formal
and expressive freedoms of
Western modernism began to
experiment with the lexicon
of customary Mamacrori sculpture
from the late 1950s In this
photograph Cliff Whiting
and Para Matchitt prepare an
exhibition of their work for a
mainly Maori audience
lsquoThe Seized Collections of the
Papua New Guinea Museumrsquo
exhibition poster 1972
Screenprint 41 x 71 cm
(16 1 frasl 8 x 28 in) National Gallery
of Australia Canberra
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1623
372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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370 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
mission36 In New Caledonia artist Aloiuml Pilioko was a
villager rom Wallis Island (par t o French Polynesia)
working as a migrant labourer in Noumea where he
came across an improvised art gallery in set up
in a colonial villa by French-Russian eacutemigreacute Nicolaiuml
Michoutouchkine Tese snippets o biography are
mentioned only to indicate the social complexity rom
which indigenous modernism emerged in the Pacific
A third actor was the influence o expatriate
Europeans or white settlers who acted as lsquotalent
spottersrsquo mentors and conduits or modernist values
and concepts It is commonplace in New Zealandor example to speak o the lsquoovey generationrsquo when
describing the contemporary Māori artists who
emerged in the s and s Gordon ovey was a
white New Zealander appointed National Supervisor
Arts and Crafs in and in charge o the lsquoart
specialistrsquo scheme that employed art educators within
the New Zealand school system In this context ovey
met and beriended several Māori modernists
employed in the scheme introducing them to many
o the belies that ed modernist art in the twentieth
century He was or example a ollower o Carl Jung
and his theory o the collective unconscious and shared
mythic symbols ovey believed that lsquoWestern
civilisation had become over-intellectualised and that
the natural well-springs o innate drives had dried
uprsquo37 Like other modernists he saw those lsquonatural
well-springsrsquo exemplified in lsquoprimitiversquo art including
Māori art and the art o children
Similarly the origins o indigenous modernism in
Papua New Guinea were inseparable rom the influence
o European expatriates Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier
who shared an admiration o indigenous art and a
belie in the innate sources o artistic creativity Te
Beiers arrived in Port Moresby in where Ulli Beier
had taken a position teaching literature at the
University o Papua New Guinea Both were previously
resident in Nigeria where they had played an in fluential
role in that countryrsquos artistic lie over several years
spanning its independence in Born in Germany
Ulli Beier was a literary scholar translator and critic
while Georgina British-born was an artist printmaker
and art educator Tey were charismatic figures
sensitive to the intricate social dynamics o Port
Moresby and keen to engage with its indigenous
inhabitants who had an historic sense o their role in
introducing modern modes o artistic expression in
Papua New Guinea Te Beiers sought out the
artistically gifed among the people around them ndash
individuals like Akis Kauage Fame Aihi and others
introduced them to new media and techniques ndash and
encouraged them in the novel vocation o being lsquoartistsrsquo
on their own individual terms making lsquoartrsquo as a
potentially saleable commodity Tey also orchestrated
around their proteacutegeacutes an improvised world o art
workshops commercial ventures in making and selling
art and exhibitions in university classrooms and
abroad that presented their work as lsquocontemporary artrsquo
rom the young nation o Papua New Guinea Teir
impact on students at the university was equally
galvanizing Students were challenged to turn not to
Western models o literature art and theatre but to
the oral perormative and visual traditions o their
own natal villages ndash traditions that could be renewed
and reinterpreted in contemporary ways Although
modest in origin these artistic experiments were
quickly incorporated into the discourse o Papua
New Guinearsquos imminent nationhood Tey were
institutionalized through the creation o the National
Art School in (along with corollary initiatives such
as the National Teatre Company and the Institute o
Papua New Guinea Studies) and used to signiy the
new nation in exhibitions civic architecture public
sculpture and so orth
In New Zealand in the s Māori modernism
was also engaged in the discourse o nationhood
Tere decolonization had two trajectories one driven
by settler culture concerned to lsquoreinventrsquo New Zealand
as a culture independent o Britain and the Britishness
that pervaded settler society38 and the other driven by
Māoridom increasingly asserting its cultural claim on
the national uture Te Māori modernists exhibiting
in the Pākehā art world clearly saw their movement
as contesting the terms o the representation o
nationhood I there was to be a modern art reflecting
the unique character o New Zealand society they
argued in one exhibition it surely would draw its
inspiration rom the countryrsquos indigenous art since
that is what made New Zealand society unique 39
Aloiuml Pilioko and Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine are
interesting in this period because o their eccentric
relationship to nationalist discourse in the absence
o an institutionalized art world Afer meeting in
Noumea they ormed a lie-long partnership with
Michoutouchkine nurturing Piliokorsquos lsquonaturalrsquo artistic
gifs In afer a period on the tiny island o
Futuna they set up a permanent home and studio
base in Port Vila in the then New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
ogether they pursu
and adventure both i
Michoutouchkine wa
his privileged access
late s and s t
collection o Oceanic
most collectors who
Michoutouchkine an
For over three decad
lsquoOceanic artrsquo in the is
Port Vila Papeete S
Michoutouchkinersquos c
modernist experimen
in introducing into P
bourgeoisie a sense o
excitement and pote
personalities and Pil
magazines and local n
attooed Women of B
a tapestry made o co
sacking rom copra b
exemplified the creat
the modern Pacific a
dawned in Vanuatu i
migrant citizens rom
backgrounds Polyne
Papua New Guinea Banking
Corporation building Port
Moresby c 1975
Architect James Birrell faccedilade
panel designs David Lasisi
Martin Morububuna
The Young Nation of Papua
New Guinea poster c 1978
Screenprint poster
56 x 75 cm (22 x 29 frac12 in)
Collection of Flinders University
Art Museum Adelaide
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
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374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
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378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
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380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
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382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
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F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
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372 P A R T F I V E
as quasi-ambassadors or the new nation when they
organized o their own accord urther exhibitions o
Oceanic art at multiple venues in Europe the Soviet
Union and Japan40
As contemporary artistic expressions burgeoned
across the Pacific Samoan novelist Albert Wendt drew
their various maniestations together in a visionary
essay entitled lsquoowards a New Oceaniarsquo published in
the first issue o a literary journal called Mana Review
in For Wendt they represented a resh
independent voice in the Pacific that re-posed the
question o cultural tradition not just as revival and
preservation but as a resource rom the past ndash a
lsquoabulous treasure housersquo as he put it ndash or imaginative
re-creation by contemporary artists in and or the
present41 Wendt endorsed the essentially individual
character o the modern artist whose reedom as an
individual stood apart rom the social norms and
traditional hierarchies that still held sway in the
Pacific indeed which were reasserting their authority
in the hybrid democracies taking shape in Oceania
For Wendt the individual artist could unction in a
new role as a critic o decolonization Here he speaks
o writing but the same is true o other orms o
post-colonial art lsquoOur writing is expressing a revolt
against the hypocritical exploitative aspects o our
traditional commercial and religious hierarchies
colonialism and neo-colonialism and the degrading
values being imposed rom outside and by some
elements in our societiesrsquo42
In act indigenous modernists had complex and
ambivalent relationships to their ancestral cultures
and visual traditions On the one hand the artistic
reedoms o Western modernism could challenge the
conventionality and relevance o those traditions
Paratene Matchittrsquos Whiti te Ra ( page ) and
Buck Ninrsquos Te Canoe Prow () or example
appropriated visual orms rom traditional Māori
carving in paintings that used the figurative distortions
o Picasso and the disarticulated syntax o cubism
Teir aim in simple terms was to update Māori art
and bring it into dialogue with Western modernism
and Māori lie in the contemporary world Selwyn
Murursquos Parihaka series () or example used the
idiom o European Expressionism to create a set o
narrative paintings based on an episode o anti-colonial
resistance in the nineteenth century that would resonate
with the Māori struggle again st the state in the late
s Likewise Arnold Wilsonrsquos ane Mahuta (
page ) challenged the conventions o Māori
woodcarving by interpreting its avatar ndash the god o the
orest ndash in modernist abstract orm M āori modernism
was thus a sophisticated dialogue with both Western
modernism and Māori visual traditions rom which
as Damian Skinner has argued it sought to mark a
critical distance43 Wilsonrsquos critique was made explicit
in the s when he attacked the preservationist ethos
o the Institute o Maori Arts and Crafs lsquoReviving
so-called Maori arts and crafs is a dead losshellip All
theyrsquore doing is reviving something that doesnrsquot apply
to the Maorirsquos present-day attitudes and way o liehellipitrsquos
time they scrubbed itrsquo44 For the modernists there was
a sense that Māori art could no longer be bound and
defined by this ethos which had been reified in the
visual conventions o the lsquotraditionalrsquo meeting house
Māori art was entering ndash indeed had long ago entered
Aloiuml PiliokoTattooed Women
of Belona Solomon Isles
1966
Wool tapestry on jute
(copra sack) 685 x 222 cm
(27 x 87 3 frasl 8 in) Collection of
the artist
Encouraged to pursue a career
as a modern Pacific artist by his
friend French-Russian eacutemigreacute
Nicolaiuml Michoutouchkine
Wallis Islander Aloiuml Pilioko
found his expressive voice with
the invention of his lsquoneedle
paintingsrsquo made with coloured
wool sewn into sacking
Together the two artists
travelled and exhibited widely
in the Pacific Islands Europe
Eastern Europe and Asia
lsquo T H E Q U E S T S H O U L D B E F O R A N
Like a tree a culture is forever growing new bran
Our cultures contrary to the simplistic interpretat
among us were changing even in pre- papalagi t
island contact and the endeavours of exceptiona
who manipulated politics religion and other peo
utterances of our elite groups our pre- papalagi c
or beyond reproach No culture is perfect or sacr
dissent is essential to the healthy survival develo
any nation ndash without it our cultures will drown in s
was allowed in our pre- papalagi cultures what c
than using war to challenge and overt hrow existi
a frequent occurrence No culture is ever static n
(a favourite word with our colonisers and romant
stuffed gorilla in a museum
There is no state of cultural purity (or perfect stat
from which there is decline usage determines au
Fall no sun-tanned Noble Savages existing in So
Golden Age except in Hollywood films in the ins
and art by outsiders about the Pacific in the brea
elite vampires and in the fevered imaginations of
revolutionaries We in Oceania did not a nd do n
God and the ideal life I do not advocate a return
papalagi Golden Age or Utopian womb Physicall
for such a re-entry Our quest should not be for a
cultures but for the creation of new cultures wh
of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts
for a new Oceania
Albert Wendt lsquoTowards a New
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1723
374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1823
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1923
378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2023
380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2123
382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2223
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1723
374 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
ndash secular public space Teir work accepted the reality
o that dissemination as they created works or art
galleries libraries radio stations airports government
buildings and so orth
On the other hand the revival o customary
culture was a powerul political orce by the s
and many contemporary artists began to turn to it as
a source o anti-colonial resistance and alternative
value In Hawailsquoi or exa mple where Native Hawaiians
began to contest the exploitation o their islands and
the hegemony o American culture artist Rocky Jensen
established an artistsrsquo collective called Hale Hauā III
which sought to ground itsel in traditions o Hawaiian
knowledge (Te collective took its name rom a
precolonial institution o instruction that had been
revived in the nineteenth century by King Kalakaua
in a prior moment o cultural resurgence and which
Jensen revived a third time in the s)45 In New
Zealand the resurgence o Māori culture coincided
with the assertion o land and political rights and
prompted a call among Māori artists and writers to
return to the marae the customary home o Māori art
Te new relation is exemplified in Paratene Matchittrsquos
mural e Whanaketanga o ainui () in the dining
hall at urangawaewae Marae Ngaruawahia Located
in the marae complex the mural explores the history
and heritage o the ainui people in a way that has
much in common with the whare whakairo (meeting
house) linking people together and explaining cultural
above left
Paratene Matchitt
Whiti te Ra 1962
Tempera on board
71 x 104 cm (28 x 41 in)
Waikato Museum of Art
and History Te Whare
Taonga o Waikato
below left
Arnold Wilson
Tane Mahuta 1957
Wood (kauri)
Height 121 cm (47 5 frasl 8 in)
Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki
right
Rocky Kalsquoiouliokahihikolo
lsquoEhu Jensen He Ipu Malsquoona
(lsquoThe Never-empty Bowl or
The Plentiful Platterrsquo) 1977
False kamani wood with
abalone shell Length 102 cm
(40 in) Hawaii State Museum
of Art Honolulu
below
Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga
o Ranginui ramacrua ko
Papatuanuku 1969ndash74
Mixed-media mural
26 x 76 m (8 frac12 x 25 ft)
National Library Wellington
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1823
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1923
378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2023
380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2123
382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2223
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1823
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE MAJORIT Y OF MA macr ORI ARTISTS who
were experimenting with modernism in the 1950s
and 1960s followed a kind of modernist primitivismin which the artistic lessons of European artists
such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore were used
to interpret customary Maori motifs The modernism of these
artists depended on a staging of difference from customary
Maori ar t ndash an unadorned surface a reliance on sculptural
depth or the adoption of a radically flattened pictorial space
from which modelling and the illusion of depth were banished
yet also in order to declare their difference from what went
before it depended on an a ppeal to Maori ar t and subject
matter These artist s were Maori and m odernist and it was
the frisson of the two identities that fuelled their art
One artist who stands apart from this approach is Ralph
Hotere Beginning his career as an art specialist with the
Department of Education under t he auspices of Gordon Tovey
Hotere was part of the beginnings of contemporary Mamacrori art
Missing some of the early exhibitions of modern Maori ar t
because he was studying art in England and Europe Hotere
took part in such events after his return to Aotearoa NewZealand in 1965 and he rapidly became a celebrat ed member
of the contemporary Maori ar t movement
Notably though Hotere refused to adopt the more usual
position of his Maori ar t colleagues There is no lsquoandrsquo linking
the identities of Maori and m odernist within his practice His
attitude is informed by a resolutely modernist belief in the
autonomy of art lsquoNo object and certainly no painting is seen
in the same way by everyone yet most people want
an unmistakable meaning that is accessible to all in a work
of artrsquo said Hotere in 1973 lsquoIt is the spectator which provokes
the change and meaning in these worksrsquo And this which hasproven to be a controversial stand within the contemporary
Maori ar t movement lsquoI am Maori by birth and upbringing
As far as my works are concerned this is coincidentalrsquoi
Seen in this context Hoterersquos comment about denying
a Maori identit y in his art is par t of a broader refusal to
participate in simplistic art-historical readings of his work
The artist does not have to validate certain interpretations
and biography does not offer a framework for understanding
a complex cultural production such as a painting Yet there is
another meaning in Hoterersquos comment which rubs against the
larger trajectory of Maori ar t in the 1970s and 1980s As his
colleagues began to respond to the Maori R enaissance
of the 1970s in which cultural and political developments
made it urgent for them to declare their identity a s Maori
in a direct manner and to replace critical distance with an
appeal to communication and a bridging of difference Hotere
remained resolutely modernist He continued to work within the
space of Maori modernism in which Mamacrori art did not need tooperate in terms of Maori soc ial or cultural practices but rather
could gather its operational procedures from contemporary
art staging and maintaining its critical difference and distance
from the art production of the recent past a context where
Maori identit y was not necessary or key to the production of
artwork Hotere remained a ( Maori) moder nist and it explains
why his work has assumed a place in PakehaNew Zealand art
histories while that of his peers has not DS
Ralph Hotere
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1923
378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2023
380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2123
382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2223
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 1923
378 P A R T F I V E
origins Moreover the mural involved the labour o
hundreds o people redefining the artist as a kind o
supervisor playing a similar role to the master carver
in the production o meeting houses Conversely the
Western art gallery could be appropriated as a Māori
cultural space as occurred or example during the
opening exhibition o Murursquos Parihaka series at the
Dowse Art Gallery in when the gallery was
transormed into a space that drew its protocols and
meanings rom the marae Te transormation was a
recognition not only o a Pākehā need to come to terms
with Māori cultural values and Māori narratives but
an indication o the way in which by the s a
European genre like oil painting could be understood
to embody ancestors just like the carvings in a whare
whakairo46 In Papua New Guinea artists also were
drawn towards clan and village on the one hand or
nation and the world on the other Akis or example
produced an extraordinary series o drawings during
his first six weeks in Port Moresby under the tutelage
o Georgina Beier Tese drawings were exhibited at the
university library in what Ulli Beier describes as lsquoan
historic occasionrsquo
A New Guinean had ndash to a point ndash stepped out o
his own culture he had made drawings that were
o no particular relevance to the people in his own
village even though they expressed his eelings
about the village and about the orest that
surrounded it and the animals and birds that
inhabited it It was a very personal statement the
drawings spoke o Akis himsel and did not ulfil
any ritual or even decorative unction in his own
community Tey appealed more to the white man
whose world he had been the first to penetrate
rom his village47
While this exhibition could be said to have initiated
a Papua New Guinean contemporary art world Akis
himsel remained with the lsquoworldrsquo o his village
Although he returned to Port Moresby to work with
Akis Untitled c 1970ndash73
Ink on paper 84 x 69 cm
(33 1 frasl 8 x 27 1 frasl 8 in) Collection
of the University of Cambridge
Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Neta Wharehoka Ngahina
Okeroa and Matarena Rau-
Kupa from Taranaki sit with
a photograph of Te Whiti
and recall the events of the
Parihaka sacking at Selwyn
Murursquos exhibition featuring
the people and events of that
occasion Dowse Art Gallery
Lower Hutt 1979
Photograph Ans Westra
Collection of The Dowse Art
Museum Lower Hutt
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2023
380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2123
382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2223
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2023
380 P A R T F I V E
Georgina again in producing yet another
remarkable series o drawings and prints and returned
occasionally thereafer to make work at what became
the National Art School he never stayed in Port
Moresby He enjoyed the ame (and cash) h is work
gave him but always returned to the social and ritual
obligations o his village lie where he lived as a
gardener and subsistence armer eventually stopping
making art For Kauage on the other hand the
trajectory o his career flowed in the opposite direction
away rom his natal village towards a ascinating world
defined by the historical novelty o Papua New Guinea
and his extraordinary lie as a citizen o it His
experience o the latter is reflected in the chromatic
brilliance o his paintings prints and drawings and
their unique iconography o flags aeroplanes
helicopters buses political events and the doings o
modern Papua New Guineans himsel chie among
them Kauagersquos aesthetic sensibility and perceptions
were no doubt ormed by his lie as a rural man rom
the Highlands but the trajectory o his unprecedented
career ndash its novelty indicated by the way he would
ofen sign his work lsquoKauage ndash artist o PNGrsquo ndash took
him into an urban national and international world
that redefined what it meant to be a Chimbu man rom
the Highlands
owards the Postcolonial
By the late s the political decolonization o the
Pacific was winding down Although the goal o
independence in several places remained an unrealized
ideal the momentum o decolonization as a global
movement had gone For the ormer imperia l powers
the business was largely done And where it remained
undone it was lefover business rom a passing era
Furthermore the end o the Cold War in and the
lsquotriumphrsquo o neo-liberalism and Western democracy
dissipated political imaginaries that had animated
political struggles since the end o the Second World
War Te aura o nationhood also lost its hold in a
world that was rapidly diminishing the power o nation
states reorganizing global economies to the advantage
o multinational corporations and borderless capital
and redefining the nature o social identities through
global media networks fluid labour markets and
ideologies o cultural pluralism
Mathias Kauage
Independence Celebration
4 1975
Screenprint 50 x 76 cm
(19 5 frasl 8 x 29 7 frasl 8 in)
Collection of the University
of Cambridge Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology
Mathias Kauage (c 1944ndash2003)
was a founding figure of modern
art in Papua New Guinea His
earliest works of 1969ndash70
featured strange creatures of
his imagination but he quickly
moved on to become an artist
of the Port Moresby urban
scene and ndash beginning with
this work ndash of public political
events and historic encounters
A number of painters working
in Port Moresby today aim to
make a living painting Kauage-
style works for sale to tourists
and art dealers
lsquoTe Maorirsquo exhibition poster
1984
Courtesy Te Maori Manaaki
Taonga Trust
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2123
382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2223
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2123
382 D E C O L O N I Z A T I O N I N D E P E N D E N C E A N D C U L T UP A R T F I V E
wo events in the s could be said to mark this
ambiguous turn in the history o decolonization One
was the exhibition lsquoe Maorirsquo ( page ) which opened
at the Metropolitan Museum o Art in New York in
ndash a bookend to lsquoArts o the South Seasrsquo with which
this chapter began lsquoe Maorirsquo is a culminating point
in the history we have sketched in this chapter because
o its success in realizing the potential o art and
ancestral culture to achieve the goals o decolonization
Conceived in the s and staged with the cooperation
o tribal leaders rom across New Zealand lsquoe Maorirsquo
was a striking demonstration o the re-empowerment
o colonized cultures over their art and representation
in the world Te exhibitionrsquos American success
enhanced the global prestige o Māori culture and its
triumphant return to New Zealand in coincided
with watershed political successes o that decade or
Māori official recognition o the reaty o Waitangi
(originally signed by tribal leaders and lsquothe Crownrsquo
in ) the establishment o a Māori land-claims
tribunal and the introduction o official biculturalism
At the same time the conditions o the exhibition ndash
sponsored by a grant rom Mobil Corporation
part-unded by the New Zealand government
toured to major American museums and galleries ndash
demonstrated the nature o the postcolonial lsquoculture
gamersquo in a post-imperial world (or a different kind o
lsquoempirersquo) in which Oceanic art was now entangled
Te second even
Kanak independence
which ollowed the s
in New Caledonia in
lsquoendrsquo the militant str
that had begun in ea
that struggle had spi
in an episode o host
in Given this tra
was a means to preve
violence Tey deerr
to a later reerendum
and initiated a set o
colonial inequities in
the Kanak populatio
recognize and develo
assassinated by a ello
compromise In the w
government underto
cultural centre which
vision o a revived Ka
and the cultural cent
thereore lie at the pr
decolonization as a p
nationhood and inde
the set o liberal dem
ushered in at the end
Mwagrave Veacuteeacute magazine cover
issue no 1 May 1993
copy ADCK-Centre Culturel
Tjibaou
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2223
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2223
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
I
N THE PHOTO ARCHIVES of the British Museum there
is a set of portrait photographs of a man identified simply as
lsquoBobrsquo or lsquoBob a Micronesian manrsquo There are nine altogether
not counting copies Some are clearly related to each other
as part of the same photo-session but others are quite
different The photographs are datable to somewhere between
1863 and 1871 on the basis of an inscription on a subset of
cartes-de-visite identifying a photographer lsquoA Pedroletti of the
Anthropological Institute of Londonrsquo Other inscriptions further
describe lsquoBobrsquo as lsquoaged 18 yearsrsquo and lsquoa native of Tarawarsquo (an
island in what is now the nation of Kiribati) although one
inscription says he is from Rotuma1 Otherwise nothing is
known about him
There is both pathos and irony in this statement of
course For while it is true that his name and story are lost and
with them the choices and circumstances that brought him to
these photographic junctures as well as the links that might
connect him to possible kin in the present the point of these
photographs in another sense was precisely to know him In
most of them he is the object of scientific scrutiny Several are
anthropometric studies a form of photography designed toserve the evidentiary purposes of medical or anthropological
inquiry into comparative physical anatomy and racial typology
To this end the bodies of racialized lsquoothersrsquo ndash lsquousually from the
polyglot crew of some sailing vessel then in Londonrsquo 2 ndash were
photographed according to a standardized formula naked at
a fixed distance from the camera shot from the front side and
rear against a neutral background beside a metric measuring
rod A subset of lsquo Bobrsquosrsquo portraits is of this order including the
profile illustrated here
What is intriguing about the set however is the variety of
portrait types lsquoBobrsquo inhabits In another he is an ethnographic
subject dressed in a costume ndash a form of body armour
made from coconut fibres ndash that identifies him with his place
of origin and the specificities of its language social roles
technologies religion and so on In yet another a carte-de-
visite he appears as a young Victorian gentleman dressed in
a shirt and tie a coat and a buttoned-up waistcoat This is the
most intriguing photograph in the series The carte-de-visite
was an invention of the mid-nineteenth century that spurred a
lucrative commerce in ersatz portraiture Cheap and easy to
produce members of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie
in metropolitan capitals paid en masse to have their likenesses
captured in a manner that vaguely imitated the conventions of
old aristocratic portrait paintings Did lsquoBobrsquo choose to have his
portrait taken in this manner
It would be nice to imagine lsquoB obrsquo as a kind of nineteenth-
century postmodernist avant la lettre assuming different
social guises in order to co nfound the dominance of any one
of them But this would be wrong for obvious reasons These
photographs were made to circulate within professionalsocieties clubs and institutes of an academic and exclusively
male nature Even the possible exceptions ndash the cartes-de-
visite ndash are nonetheless explicitly inscribed with the name of
the lsquoAnthropological Institute Londonrsquo And while it may be
that the authority of these photographs is most unstable due
to the differences between them ndash it is there that arguments
and anxieties that animated the discourse of human origins
social development and class hierarchies are most apparent
ndash it was a discourse from which lsquoBobrsquo and his like were totally
excluded He is the object of these representations Although
he presumably consented to the photographic exercise for
whatever small advantage it may have given him he has no
control over or voice in these represent ations even as they
are ostensibly about him ndash a powerlessness and absence
reflected in the evacuated look with which in another portrait
he confronts the camera PB
lsquoK i r ibat i Bobrsquo
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery
7242019 Art in Oceania
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullart-in-oceania 2323
F
E
A
T
U
R
E
T
HE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER of customary
art is typically thought to reside in its relationship
to particular communities Yet customary arts
are open to all kinds of entanglements with
the wider world today with museums art
galleries government agencies churches tourist schemes
universities and so on Customary artists are savvy operators
in seizing opportunities to sell share promote or otherwise
disseminate their art in spaces beyond their communities
Does this signify the inevitable disintegration of strong
communities or some vital dynamic at work in the way they are
rearticulating their place in the contemporary world
One arena where this dissemination is taking place is
in Contemporary Art galleries Consider for example a 2009
project by Leba Toki Bale Jione a nd Robin White entitled
Teitei Vou (A New Garden ) commissioned for the sixth Asia
Pacific Triennial and now in the collection of the Queensland
Art Gallery Australia Toki and Jione come from the island of
Moce in the Lau group of the Fijian islands and are makers of
traditional masi (decorated barkcloth) White is a contemporary
artist from New Zealand with a career dating back to the 1970s
From 1981 she lived for eighteen years on the island of Tarawa
in Kiribati often passing through Fiji on trips to New Zealand
In this time she developed a pract ice of collaborating with
Island women in the creation of works that draw on communal
traditions and techniques such as embroidery barkcloth and
flax weaving
These collaborations were enabled by the fact that White
shared with many of these women a common faith They
were Bahalsquoi ndash a religion with adherents in many Pacific islands
that advocates an ideal of diversity affirming many cultural
practices as authentic expressions of the faith In that respect
these collaborations can be understood as forms of religious
practice exploring the intersection between faith and culture
But they are also collaborations with the institutions of the
Contemporary Art world for which Teitei Vou was made
The work comprises nine pieces of cloth of varying types
including the decorated masi illustrated opposite The cloth is
a form of customary gift given by Fijian families at a wedding
ndash the ceremony that ritually enacts the joining together of
complex differences between individuals obviously but also
between families villages ethnic groups religions classes
nationalities as the case may be And these days they are
often heterogeneous in the extreme The particular focus of
Teitei Vou is revealed in the hybrid character of the cloth which
includes two lsquorag matsrsquo made from Indian sari cloth and the
iconography of the main masi a blend of traditional patterns
and unique imagery designed by the three collaborators The
imagery refers in part to Fijirsquos sugar industry to its history of
indentured Indian labour in the nineteenth century and the
social and political legacy of that history in the present as the
two races lsquoweddedrsquo to each other by the past struggle to
coexist On the other hand the iconography offers a hopeful
symbolism for the future Sugar doubles as a metaphor for thelsquosweetnessrsquo of lsquopeaceful human relationsrsquo while the ar tists have
placed at the centre of the masi the image of the Bahalsquoi World
Centre at Haifa Israel amid echoes of its terraced gardens on
the slopes of Mount Carmel
Thus a religious vision drawing on the wells of cultural
custom is addressed to t he situation of present-day Fiji via the
public space of a Contemporary Art gallery There Teitei Vou
is a precise articulation of big questions facing Contemporary
Art and the lsquopublic spherersquo in general today how is the
experience of multiple modernities to be expressed How can
communities speak across their own boundaries What do
venerable traditions ndash cultural and religious ndash have to say to
global audiences And how will customary form s and values
be translated in that context PB
Collaborat ing with the Contemporary
Robin White Leba Toki
Bale Jione Teitei vou
(A new garden) (detail) 2009
Natural dyes on barkcloth390 x 240cm
The cloth illustrated called
a taumanu is one of nine
components in the complete
work which includes mats
made of woven pandanus
with commercial wool woven
barkcloth and sari fabric
Collection Queensland Art
Gallery