By Krisztina Turza.
Gender was central to this conference commencing with Yuki Kihara’s ‘Paradise Camp’, New Zealand’s offering at the 59th Venice Biennale. This focuses on Fa’afafine (Sāmoa’s third gender) utopia – where colonial heteronormativity is shattered to make way for an Indigenous worldview that’s inclusive and sensitive to the changes in the environment. But beneath the surface of this utopian ideal lies the real-life stories of trials, tribulations and triumphs: how the Fa’afafine community works through the colonial legacy of gender, sexuality and the environment specific to the social and political contexts in Sāmoa.
An exploration of some contemporary female Māori artists who empower the narratives of women in their art by Jacqueline Charles-Rault from the Université Le Havre Normandie followed. She looked at Lisa Reihana, who also upholds tradition in her photographic series, A Digital Marae, which draws attention to the narratives of some of the female Deities in Māori storytelling, by using Photoshop as her carving tool to create her digital marae. Other artists discussed include painter Robyn Kahukiwa whose paintings are a form of self-identity and affirm her identity as a Māori wahine (woman) and Star Gossage who interconnects the themes of wahine and whenua (land) in her paintings.
Melissa Malu from the Australian Museum spoke of maintaining feminine identity through material culture, in diaspora, based on a collaboration with Miriama Simmons, Moemoana Schwenke and Anaseini Ulaka that showcased three Pasifika women residing in diaspora in Australia, and their efforts to maintain their sense of identity through tangible and intangible culture, such as the liku, a Fijian fibre skirt worn around the waist and hips signifying a woman’s life stage and deeply connected to veiqia (female tattooing), the ‘Ie Tōga woven pandanus leaves, and the Kato Alu a traditionally woven basket.
The art of the CHamoru of the Mariana Islands featured in two presentations. Christine \”Tina\” Taitano DeLisle from the University of Minnesota, examined the decolonial work of Indigenous CHamoru feminist activist-artists of Guåhan within broader historical and political struggles for CHamoru self-determination and sovereignty in the island, and an Indigenous women-led cultural resurgence and rematriation movement for the return, restoration, and caretaking of Indigenous homelands, ancestor burials, Indigenous knowledge, natural resources, and sacred objects. Sainsbury Research Unit PhD student Alba Ferrándiz Gaudens’ presented on \’The BIBA CHamoru: Cultura e Identidad en las Islas Marianas Collaborative Exhibition at Museo Nacional de Antropología (MNA), Madrid\’ that was on show across the 2021-22 European winter as a collaboration between Spain, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The creation, production, and use of the ubiquitous printed cloth pareo (or pareu) which represents “Polynesian Paradise” in popular culture was presented by Anthony Meyer. The Polynesian pareu embodies the meeting of Pacific and Western visual cultures in the coming together of particular textile technologies, mercantile practices and socio-political histories in the 19th century. The result is the cultural icon recognized today as a Polynesian print: a combination of simplified, often oversized, floral motifs and geometric stripes in boldly contrasting colours, most often white or yellow seen against red or indigo. The research team has investigated, found, collected, and analysed several hundred original pareo including 19th century production and commercial sample books. By matching the motifs in paintings, drawings and photographs of the 19th and early 20th century, researchers have been able to reconstruct the temporality of certain motifs and restore the original colours of the pareo seen in the photographs of Robert Louis Stevenson or Jack London, and as Paul Gauguin saw them.
Anna-Karina Hermkens from Macquarie University explored the interplay between gender and barkcloth, or tapa, among the Maisin people living along the shores of Collingwood Bay in PNG. By focusing on the gendered manufacturing and use of tapa, it was revealed that barkcloth was crucial in experiences, embodiments, and performances of gender. Both making and using tapa transforms the body, mediating relations between divinities and humans, and between social actors and groups. Performance while wearing the tapa activates and expands these changes.
The gendered effects of ethnographic collecting was discussed by Carl Deußen from the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne in his analysis of a piece of ‘feather money’ collected by Wilhelm Joest on Nendö in the Santa Cruz Islands. This will be further explored in the exhibition “Who is Joest?” in 2023. In 1897, German ethnologist and collector Wilhelm Joest spent the last three months of his life on Nendö, assembling an extensive collection. This included a piece of ‘feather money’ originally used by the islands’ inhabitants, among other things, to pay bride prices and purchase female prostitutes. Used to transform women into the collective property of Nendö men’s associations, the feather money was already gendered and charged with sexualized meaning before being collected. This made it attractive to Joest, who had always recorded non-European sexualities with a mixture of scientific interest and voyeurism. The fact that he himself had regularly frequented prostitutes throughout his life further complicates this perspective, as does his uneasy relationship with Nendö women shaped by both disgust and desire.
Steven Hooper, Director at the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, as well as the curator of ‘Power and Prestige’, a current exhibition of the art of clubs in Oceania at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac discussed the relationship between ‘persons’ and ‘things’, particularly whether things can represent or embody persons, and vice versa. His talked about how clubs are much more than weapons displaying multiple roles, including gendered ones. In particular, he spoke of a Māori taiaha staff/club inscribed with the name Shungii (an early version of Hongi Hika, c. 1772-1828) as well as a musket purportedly presented to the famous Māori chief by King George IV of England in 1820. He also spoke of ‘Ai Tutuvi ni Radini Bau’ (the Bedcover of the Queen of Bau), a club presented to Queen Victoria in 1874 by the Fijian chief Cakobau and later returned to be the mace of the colonial Legislative Council and now the mace of Fiji’s parliament. Marion Bertin later reported on her PhD study entitled ‘Gendered collecting: Oceanic weapons on the art market’ where she interviewed a few Parisian dealers and came to the conclusion that weapons, such as clubs, arrows, spears, have lost their masculinity in today’s art market, which conclusion generated some debate from the audience.
Alice Bernadac from the Cité Internationale de la Tapisserie, Aubusson, presented a study of the accounts given by Westerners of their visits to Rennell Island in the Solomon Islands between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, revealing the almost total absence of individualised feminine figures. In these accounts, exchanges with scientific expeditions or missionaries were conducted exclusively by men, who remained the only ones to be named. The diary of the American physician Sylvester Lambert and the autobiographical account adapted from his field notes do, however, open a window on the role played by Rennellese women in exchanges with the West at the beginning of the 1930s.
Maria Wronska-Friend from James Cook University, explained how a small group of coral islands near the town of Aitape on the northern coast of PNG evolved into an important economic centre used to supply vital goods and services to mainland communities, where similar to other Melanesian societies, gender roles informed social life, art, and economic activities, determining labour skills and access to raw materials. Embellished with elaborate carvings, shells, and feather decorations, the canoes were akin to huge floating art installations. Women applied their creativity in processing reef resources into personal ornaments. The most prominent were large shell rings raba, also used as a currency unit and wealth items. While men were in charge of religious and ritual aspects of life, women, by controlling the production of raba, were in a position to regulate the local economy. Colonisation and the arrival of missionaries to this area from the late 1880s upset this well-balanced economic system, resulting in a major shift in gender relations and the marginalization of women due to the introduction of factory-made replicas of shell goods.
Fiji’s indigenous society is ranked in such a way that enables everyone to have the ability to hone a skill and undertake tasks that fulfills obligations put forward by the Turaga ni Vanua or the chief. As both an iTaukei person and a museum practitioner, Tarisi Vunidilo from the University of Hawai‘i introduced the audience to the Mataisau clan, into which she was born. The ‘mataisau’ are a group of people, mostly men, who practice their given art as carpenters. They specialize in house and canoe building, making of wooden weapons such as war clubs or iwau, and spears and any other duties required by the chief. These became highly regarded ‘collectibles’ by male collectors in the 1800s.
While Pacific collections in ethnological museums include many wooden artefacts, very few have in-depth knowledge of their materiality or their deeper meanings. Hilke Thode-Arora described a project that has started to scrutinise all wooden artefacts of the Māori collection in the Museum Fünf Kontinente that will include Māori expertise and will be combined with natural science approaches of assessing wood-types and carving techniques. Provenance research will try to trace back the artefacts to, if possible, the Māori owners and makers.
Gender considerations are often discussed in the provenance and curatorial practices associated with fibre objects in museum collections. Marine Vallée from the Musée de Tahiti et des Iles – Te Fare Manaha reported on ongoing research on collections held at Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, and at the Musée de Tahiti et des Îles – Te Fare Manaha, discussing collecting, acquisition conditions, and display practices.
Eric Kjellgren’s presentation explored the ongoing process of creating, reimagining, and renewing the exhibits of Te Ana Peua (‘The Open Cave’) a community museum in the village of Vaitahu on the island of Tahuata in Te Fenua ‘Enata (the Marquesas Islands). Te Ana Peua was originally founded by the local ‘Enata community in collaboration with archaeologists from the University of Hawai’i, Manoa and was initially created to primarily house objects discovered in a succession of local archaeological excavations in Vaitahu itself (rather than in the Musee de Tahiti et Des Iles – Te Fare Manaha over 1,200km away). Te Ana Peua has an evolving role in safeguarding and presenting objects from the past as well as promoting works by contemporary artists.
Tāhii, or Marquesan woven fans, the symbols of high rank and status, displayed by both women and men, was the topic introduced by Carol Ivory, Washington State University. At least four were among the first objects collected from the Marquesas by the Cook expedition in 1774. They remained in evidence as a mark of rank well into the 19th century. Over time, the knowledge of how to make them from exactly what fibers has been lost. A scientific project has commenced at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac to investigate both technique and materials, including consultation with the women of Ua Huka.
Caroline van Santen, PhD researcher at the Sainsbury Research Centre, University of East Anglia presented on the lack of consensus as to which types of Marquesan ear ornaments were worn by men or women or by both. Many historical accounts on the Marquesas Islands contain references to these four types of ear ornamentation: large wooden ones (kouhau), turtle shell ear ornaments (uuhei), ear ornaments made from a whale tooth (haakai), and composite shell ear ornaments (pūtaiana).
Wonu Veys from the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, in the Netherlands, explored the topic of female tattooing in Tonga, examining the limited number of oral histories and written sources to discuss the historical rank of women in Tongan society.
The National Gallery of Australia’s Crispin Howarth presented on the repatriation of one object previously owned by Surrealist Max Ernst. In 1985 the NGA acquired 96 African, Pacific and American objects which formed a large part of Surrealist Max Ernst’s collection. One rather unusual object proved problematic in its authenticity. Subsequent research has led to unravelling the likely origins of the object and identifying a number of similar bone objects ‘in the manner of’ Māori cultural art in collections. Held up by COVID, the object has now ceremoniously returned home to Aotearoa.
The acquisition of some 300 objects collected in the Pacific during the 18th and 19th centuries, and their circulation between different institutions within the National Museums Scotland is the focus of research by Melissa Shiress from the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia. The presentation sought to explore ways in which Scots imagined the Pacific and its peoples in this period, and the practices of collecting within the context of British imperialism that brought these objects to Edinburgh.
Due to the Queen’s passing the fabulous London Pacific Fashion Week was held in Paris and a preview was provided of designers and representatives from American Samoa (Lenita’s Collection By J-Len T’s); Australia (Ikuntji Artists by Dr Chrischona Schmidt); Cook Islands (Lau Secmana by Toka Toka); Fiji/UK (Vulagi Design & Silpa GrG by Silpa Grg & Ana Lavekau); New Caledonia (Hadda Creations by Annie Diemene); New Zealand (Kahuwai Clothing by Amber Bridgman and Kharl WiRepa Fashion by himself); and Papua New Guinea (Kenny Collection by Kenny Ng).
The next PAA conference will be held in Berlin in 2023.