Recent pacificarts items

Restitution to Our Oceans–to our Pasifika I, II, III, and IV

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Gazellah Bruder is an artist based in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. She presents four paintings she created while an artist-in-residence (August to October 2025) in the Leipzig International Art program at the Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei in Germany. In an artist statement, Bruder describes how her paintings are inspired by conversations surrounding complex subjects—colonization, de-colonization, identity, and restitution—and presents a critique of the devastating human impact on the earth’s oceans and ocean life. Her work calls for restitution to the oceans. Then, in an interview with art historian Stacy L. Kamehiro, Bruder discusses the four paintings and her artistic process in detail.

Reactivation and Reconnection at the Chamorro Latte Ceremony at the Bishop Museum

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On June 15, 2024, during the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture (FestPAC), the Bishop Museum held a ceremony honoring the latte—ancient Chamorro megalithic stone house pillars—that the museum stewards. Unlawfully removed from the Mariana Islands in the 1920s, these latte, along with over 10,000 artifacts, had been recently relocated to the Bishop Museum’s central courtyard by Hawaiian Chamorro diaspora members. The 2024 ceremony, attended by members of the Chamorro diaspora from the US and FestPAC delegates from Guåhan (Guam) and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, was the culmination of the reconditioning, relocation, and re-display of the ancestral latte, which took months of work. This paper, presented at the 2024 Pacific Arts Association-Europe conference in Berlin, focuses on the emotional connections that the latte ceremony elicited among three groups present: between Chamorros who attended, between Chamorros and the latte, and between Chamorros...

Native Art, Culture, Education, and Healing in Hawaiʻi: Family Stories of Connection

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This personal essay takes shape around short descriptions and images of recent community arts and cultural events of Hawaiʻi. Reflections by the authors bring additional layers of meaning to the text. Through the interweaving of these different elements, the essay proposes family stories of Native art, culture, education, and healing in Hawaiʻi as antidotes to art-historical canons, especially those reinforced by settler colonial museums and Westernized higher education systems in the Hawaiian Islands.

Book Review: Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean, edited by Cassandra Coblentz

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Book review: Cassandra Coblentz, editor, Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean. X Artists’ Books and Oceanside Museum of Art, 2025. ISBN: 9798990698581. 176 pages, illustrations (chiefly color), maps. Hardcover, US$45.

Past, Present, Futures: Telling Indigenous Stories through an Urban Art Aesthetic

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Indigenous muralists across the Pacific have adopted urban art aesthetics as a strategic means of asserting ongoing presence, celebrating cultural traditions, and articulating visions of Indigenous futures. This research note examines two murals by Hawaiian artists Carl F.K. Pao, Cory Taum, and Solomon Enos that were included in the 2021 Bishop Museum exhibition POW! WOW! The First Decade: From Hawai‘i to the World. Through urban art’s accessible visual language, these artists assert an enduring Indigenous will to self-define, ground their work in ancestral knowledge, and articulate temporal visions that span past, present, and multiple futures.

Announcements

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Calls for papers & participation, PAA membership, advertisements, new publications, position announcements

California Is the Eastern Pacific: Toward a Collective Oceanic Realignment

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article is a reprint of a curatorial essay written for the catalogue of Transformative Currents: Art and Action in the Pacific Ocean, a multi-venue exhibition presented as part of Art & Science Collide, Getty’s most recent PST ART initiative (2024–25). Transformative Currents featured work by twenty-one artists and collaborative teams from across the Pacific region at three venues in Southern California: Oceanside Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art (now UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art), and Crystal Cove Conservancy. The essay details how the show, while rooted in Southern California, attempted to suture the ways in which the Pacific has been divided by colonial and imperialist powers and, thus, is regularly presented in large-scale exhibitions. It argues that the work in Transformative Currents both disembarked from Southern California and seemingly always recalled it, the artists navigating...

Book Review: Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art, by Deirdre Brown and Ngarino Ellis with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Book review: Deirdre Brown and Ngarino Ellis, with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2025. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-83962-2, ISBN-10: 0-226-83962-1, xii+604 pages, 584 color illustrations, notes, references, index. Cloth US$55.

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 26, No. 1 (2026)

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Pacific Arts Vol. 26 No. 1 (2026) Cover, Journal Information, and Table of Contents

Kanak Cultural Presence, Pedagogy, and Reformulation: An Interview with Will Nerho aka WillStyle

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this interview, Kanak musician and graffiti artist Will Nerho (WillStyle), from the Neaoua tribe in Waa Wi Luu (Houaïlou) in the A’jië-Arhö region of Kanaky/New Caledonia, discusses his creative practice and navigation of cultural politics. He calls attention to the rejection of Kanak cultural markers he has experienced in Nouméa, capital of the country, located in the South Province. He also discusses the place of local animals in his art, their connection to Kanak culture, and the ecological pedagogical practice that comes with painting animals. Nerho offers a critique of French colonial appropriation of Kanak art, objects, culture, and knowledge, and emphasizes the importance of reclamation and transmission of culture within Kanak society, notably through language. He explains the significance of the flèche faîtière (carved wooden rooftop spires on Kanak houses) and reflects on his work reformulating and redesigning those flèches faîtières scattered...

Kilenge Nausang Singsing (West New Britain, 1977–1978): A VisuaI Essay

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In this visual essay, the author documents the Kilenge Nausang masks he photographed in 1977 and 1978 during a Nausang singsing in the Kilenge village cluster of Ulumainge, Waremo, and Saumoi in West New Britain. The Kilenge people describe the Nausang as a giant of extraordinary power, a being with an essentially malevolent character who serves a corrective function. The author also presents his photo-documentation of a Nausang mask depicted on the men’s house (naulum) in Potne, New Britain, as well as the construction of the men’s house.

Book Review: Sea of Islands: Exploring Objects, Stories, and Memories from Oceania, by Carol E. Mayer

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Book review: Carol E. Mayer, Sea of Islands: Exploring Objects, Stories, and Memories from Oceania. Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing and Museum of Anthropology at UBC, 2025. ISBN: 978-1-77327-155-2, 240 pages, color & b/w illustrations, map, acknowledgments, notes, selected bibliography, index. Hardcover US$50.

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 26, No. 1 (2026)

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 26, No. 1 (2026) Full Issue

“Our Gallery is the Heiau”: A Discussion of the Revitalization of Hawaiian Wood Carving

Wed, 4 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This dialogue between Andre Perez and J. Kēhaulani Kauanui explores the recent revitalization of Hawaiian wood carving through two recent projects Perez had a leadership role in. Perez is founder and project director of Hui Kālai Kiʻi o Kūpāʻaikeʻe, a carving apprenticeship program based in Waiawa, Oʻahu, Hawai‘i. In 2025, he co-curated, with Hawaiian artist Kaili Chun, the exhibition Ho‘okāhi ka ‘Ilau Like Ana—Wield the Paddles Together at Gallery ‘Iolani at Windward Community College. For the show, Perez and Chun selected canoe paddles made in the Pacific carving village that Perez organized for the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture (FestPAC) in 2024. In the FestPAC carving village, hosted by Bishop Museum, master carvers from various Pacific nations created large wooden canoe-steering paddles (hoe uli). In this discussion, Perez and Kauanui cover a range of issues related to the traditional Hawaiian practice of carving, including the cultural politics...

Announcements

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Calls for participation, conferences, exhibitions, new publications, position announcements, PAA membership

Painting with the Subject-Collaborator

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This visual essay introduces the work of Gisela McDaniel, a diasporic, Indigenous CHamoru artist based in New York. Working primarily with women and femme people who identify as Indigenous, multiracial, immigrant, refugee/displaced, and/or of color, her work responds to historical/contemporary patterns of censorship as it relates to the exhibition of women’s/femme bodies, voices, and narratives.

Sprouting Photographic Lotuses: On the Visual Return of Gregory Bateson’s Photographs to Iatmul Villages

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This article discusses the recent visual return of photographs made in Iatmul villages (East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea) between 1929 and 1933 by British anthropologist Gregory Bateson to those communities. It introduces the project and its methods, focusing on the specificities of returning culturally sensitive images to the region. It then discusses Bateson’s photographic practices in relation to the broader history of anthropology and its uses of the camera, highlighting the ways in which photography can be seen as cutting its subjects from their original context. It also uses the metaphor of a lotus growing, comparing the return of photographs to Iatmul communities to a horticultural “striking” process and the researcher to a gardener placing a “cutting” in a fertile environment in which it can sprout and grow anew.

Aloha Nō and the Power of Healing in Contemporary Hawaiian Art: An Interview with Meleanna Aluli Meyer and Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
In a three-part interview, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui engages multimedia artist, visual poet, and educator Meleanna Aluli Meyer, and scholar, curator, and writer Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu. They discuss the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025 (HT25): Aloha Nō, the state’s largest thematic exhibition of contemporary art in Hawaiʻi, the Pacific, and beyond. In the first segment, Kauanui engages Kahanu and Meyer regarding their connection through friendship, related kin ties, and the Hawaiian art scene. In the second segment, Meyer discusses her vision for and creation of her installation work ‘Umeke Lāʻau: Culture Medicine and how it relates to her longtime art practice. In the third segment, Kahanu discusses her trajectory as a curator and how that artistic labor is connected to her ongoing work in relation to the Hawaiian community.

Exhibition Review: Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025: Aloha Nō

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Exhibition review: Hawaiʻi Triennial 2025: Aloha Nō, curated by Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Binna Choi, and Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu. The exhibition was presented at fourteen venues on Oʻahu, Maui, and Hawaiʻi Island, February 15–May 4, 2025.

Irony and Ephemerality: Siapo in the Exhibition Atalilo: Motifs in Sāmoan Material Culture (2024)

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Atalilo: Motifs in Sāmoan Material Culture (2024–27) is the first exhibition staged in the newly established Ōfaga o Saʻliʻiliga National University of Sāmoa Research Museum. The exhibition explores the myriad uses of motifs across six genres of Sāmoan material culture: tatau (tattooing), afa (sennit lashing), ʻele (pottery), maʻa (petroglyphs), laʻau (wood carvings), and siapo (barkcloth). While displays of each genre had its own challenges in presentation, design, and curation, the most complex was the section on siapo. This article begins with an introduction to siapo’s cultural and historical significance and its contemporary production and use. It then outlines emerging institutional and cultural ironies in attempting to display nineteenth-century siapo in contemporary Sāmoa—issues that prompt deeper questions about the urgent need to recognize and support both the living and ephemeral dimensions of Sāmoan heritage.

Voices of the Pacific: Art, Tradition, and In-novation at CaixaForum Madrid

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This article reviews the exhibition Voices of the Pacific: Innovation and Tradition (CaixaForum Madrid, May 28–September 14, 2025), which featured more than 210 artifacts from the British Museum and other collections. The exhibition explored the artistic and cultural expressions of Oceanic island communities through seven thematic sections: innovation and tradition, innovators, weavers, dancers, warriors, carvers, and travelers. It gave special attention to emblematic objects such as Polynesian idols, Melanesian weaponry, Micronesian ceremonial gear, and an installation by Māori artist George Nuku.

Fijian Urban Youth Futures: Arts | Transmission | Resilience

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
The online exhibition iSausauvou: Arts | Transmission | Resilience (2022–ongoing) was organized in the framework of “Urban Pathways: Fiji. Youth. Arts. Culture.,” a collaborative research project funded by the British Academy’s Youth Futures program. Following an overview of the project and its core activities, this article focuses on the online exhibition, which showcases artworks created by young people who live in Fiji and its diaspora communities. Asked to reflect on urban youth culture, these young artists contemplate the social and cultural expectations that come with being youth in a multifaith, multilingual urban environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. By putting these youth artistic expressions within the framework of scholarship of “the future,” this paper aims to move away from the tendency to associate youth with problems such as youth unemployment and lack of education, and instead focus on how youth imagine the future through art.

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 25, No. 2 (2025)

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 24, No. 1 (2024) Full Issue

Decolonial Knowledge Production and Reconnection through a Mormah Headdress from Simbu

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the relationship between knowledge, colonial entanglement, and material culture through the case study of a ceremonial headdress, a mormah, from Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea, currently held in the Linden-Museum Stuttgart. The mormah, once used during highland rituals such as buka ingu, exemplifies how colonial collecting practices decontextualized culturally significant objects, transforming them from living ceremonial regalia into static museum artifacts. Drawing on postcolonial theory and Donna Haraway’s concept of “situated knowledges,” the authors adopt a collaborative, decolonial methodology that brings together archival museum research and oral history interviews conducted in the Kuman language with a key cultural informant: co-author Clara Bal’s grandmother. This interdisciplinary and transnational research design highlights the epistemic authority of insider knowledge and the ethical imperative of trust-based...

Book Review: An English Girl in New Guinea: Kathleen Haddon’s Journal and Photographs from New Guinea, September 16–November 18, 1914, by Kathleen Haddon, edited by Virginia-Lee Webb and Jonathan Fogel (2023)

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Book review: Kathleen Haddon, author, and Virginia-Lee Webb and Jonathan Fogel, editors, An English Girl in New Guinea: Kathleen Haddon’s Journal and Photographs from New Guinea, September 16–November 18, 1914. San Francisco, California: J. M. Fogel Media, Inc. and Premier Arts Editions, 2023. ISBN 13: 9781733007856. 192 pages, color illustrations, maps, portraits. Hardcover $89.

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 25, No. 2 (2025)

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts Vol. 25 No. 2 (2025) Cover, Journal Information, and Table of Contents

‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures in Context

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This article introduces, in English and Tongan, the volume of Pacific Arts devoted to the project titled ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures,which included a 2021 exhibition of the same name featuring artworks by Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi and Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck. It also includes biographical sketches of Tohi and Dyck.

Foreword: ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures—Back to the Future

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
A short introduction to the ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures project, presented in both English and Tongan, by the Honorable Lord Vaea, ‘Alipate Tuʻivanuavou Vaea of Houma.

“Ngatu Led Me North”: Reflections on ‘Amui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures at Pah Homestead

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This article, written as a personal response, follows two ngatu (Tongan barkcloths) from Canterbury Museum to Auckland’s Pah Homestead for the ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures exhibition, which showcased the interconnectedness of Tongan material culture, identity, and visual language. The exhibition, part of a five-year collaborative project, featured works by senior Tongan artists Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi and Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck alongside museum artifacts. This personal response highlights how Tongan artists are reclaiming cultural heritage and reasserting Indigenous knowledge in museum spaces, forging new pathways for understanding and representation.

Situating the Amuʻi ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures Exhibition at Pah Homestead, Auckland, 2021

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This visual essay situates the Amuʻi ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures exhibition at Pah Homestead in Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau with photographs of works by Tongan artists Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi and Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck, alongside loans from Canterbury Museum and Auckland Museum. Curator and collections manager Nicholas Butler presents an exhibition dedication and welcome in English and lea faka-Tonga to the homestead. Interpretative labels prepared by Billie Lythberg and Auckland War Memorial Museum for the loaned artifacts are included in this essay.

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 25, No. 1 (2025)

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts Vol. 25 No. 1 (2025) Cover, Journal Information, and Table of Contents

ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures: A Nukuʻalofa Dedication from the New Zealand High Commission

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This bilingual greeting from Tiffany Babington, then New Zealand High Commissioner to Tonga (to 2022), acknowledges the weeklong symposium ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures held in Nuku‘alofa, October 7–12, 2019.

ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures at the Hastings City Art Gallery, August 5– November 5, 2023

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This article explores the exhibition ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures, showcasing the work of Tongan artists Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck and Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi from the 1990s to the 2020s. New texts in English and te reo Māori were developed for the exhibition at Hastings City Art Gallery–Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga; this article reproduces them alongside photographs of the installation. The exhibition was part of a research project examining the legacies of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Tongan art practices. Dyck’s multimedia work reflects Tongan feminine textile traditions, while Tohi’s sculptures explore the ancient lashing technique of lalava. The overall project highlights how these artists, in collaboration with international scholars and communities, reclaim and repatriate Tongan knowledge systems encoded in woven, layered, and carved objects, bridging the past and future through art.

History, Culture, and A Tale of Two Queens: Exploring the Ngatu in ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures at Hastings City Art Gallery Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga, 2023, with a Preface by Elham Salari

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This article reproduces a gallery talk introducing the cultural and historical significance of three ngatu (Tongan barkcloths) from the Hawkes Bay Museums Trust Collection, which were central to the 2023 exhibition ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures at Hastings City Art Gallery Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga. Ngatu, made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, are integral to Tongan culture, functioning as both practical and ceremonial objects. They are used to mark important life events, including weddings, funerals, and royal ceremonies, and represent a material link between past and present. The article explores how ngatu embody Tongan time, where the present is a dynamic intersection of past and future. It also highlights how ngatu symbolized the deep connection and mutual respect between Queen Sālote Tupou III of Tonga and Queen Elizabeth II. During Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Tonga in 1953, lengths of ngatu were laid...

‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures: Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Tongan Arts and Their Legacies

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This essay introduces the two issues of Pacific Arts dedicated to the New Zealand-based, Marsden Fund (Royal Society of New Zealand)-financed research project ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures: Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Tongan Arts and Their Legacies and its affiliated traveling exhibition. The project’s participants included Phyllis Herda (anthropologist and Pacific historian), Billie Lythberg (art historian, anthropologist, and now lecturer in organizational studies), Melenaite Taumoefolau (Pacific linguist and researcher in Pacific studies), Hilary Scothorn (art historian and Pacific textile specialist), and Tongan artists Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi and Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck. These academics and artists worked collaboratively to locate, examine, and interpret late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Tongan artifacts in more than thirty collections throughout Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, and Australasia, as well as to...

ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures: An Artist Re-flection

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
The ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures project afforded me, as one of its investigator-artists, a rare opportunity to authentically engage with ancestral objects held in museum collections across the globe. This article provides a brief history of my art practice, as well as insights into my critical sense-making process and subsequent creative outputs. My reflections highlight the importance of nurturing relationships with Indigenous communities, and underscore the critical roles of museum practitioners in caring for and sharing our Indigenous treasures. Despite challenges including intergenerational knowledge loss and institutional barriers, the project advocates for decolonizing and re-Indigenizing museum practices. The ʻAmui 'i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures project exemplifies the power of authentic collaboration in preserving, honoring, and celebrating ancestral intelligence.

Return into Pacific Lights: The German “Welterkunder” Georg Forster on Captain Cook’s Second Voyage and his Tongan “Curiosities”

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This article focuses on two sorts of artifacts from Tonga that Georg Forster—a German naturalist and explorer of the late eighteenth century—translocated from Oceania to Europe. Forster traveled aboard Captain Cook’s ship Resolution on Cook’s second voyage (1772–75). During the voyage, Forster and his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, collected Pacific art objects, many of which made their way to Wörlitz, Germany. This collection was featured in a permanent exhibition (Georg Forster South Sea Exhibition) at the UNESCO World Heritage site at Wörlitz. A parallel installation celebrating Tongan art and material culture was established in Nukuʻalofa, Tonga. This article follows the migration of Tongan objects to Europe and the cooperation which arose between the artists, curators, and academics involved in the ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures project and their counterparts in Germany. The resulting relationship was instrumental in the formation of...

Past and Present Ancient Futures

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Tongan artist Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi presents a pictorial essay of his work included in the ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures exhibition, part of the larger project of the same name. Works include formative ones from early in his career, along with those created during the research for the project.

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 25, No. 1 (2025)

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Special Issue: ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures

Announcements

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Calls for papers & participation, PAA membership, advertisements, new publications, position announcements

ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures Conference, Tonga, October 2019

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
The inaugural ‘Amui ‘i Mu‘a/Ancient Futures conference held at the Tanoa International Dateline Hotel in Tonga (October 7–12, 2019) brought together artists, academics, and traditional knowledge-holders from Tonga, Aotearoa New Zealand, Germany, and the United Kingdom to consider how the future of Tongan arts can best be guided by knowledge of their past. This article details the program and associated events.

ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures: Fatu fala e fale lalanga (Weaving Threads)

Tue, 4 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000
This article explores the intertwined worldviews of Queen Sālote Tupou III and Tongan scholar Epeli Hauʻofa on identity, kinship, and self-determination in the context of Tonga’s cultural preservation and artistic legacy. Through the lens of contemporary Tongan artists Dagmar Vaikalafi Dyck and Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi, the ʻAmui ʻi Muʻa/Ancient Futures project demonstrates how their artistic practices reclaim Tongan cultural narratives from colonial collections. This article examines their shared commitment to reconnecting with ancestral knowledge, navigating diasporic identities, and challenging institutional barriers to reclaim the koloa (treasures) and histories embedded in their art and practice.

The Healer’s Wound (Exhibition and Artist’s Book)

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Healer’s Wound is an exhibition of new work by Dan Taulapapa McMullin curated by Mariquita (“Micki”) Davis and held at Pilele Projects in Los Angeles, California, June 29–July 27, 2024. The exhibition coincided with the publication of the second edition of Taulapapa's artist's book, The Healer’s Wound: A Queer Theirstory of Polynesia, edited by Marika Emi and curated by Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick (Honolulu: Tropic Editions and Puʻuhonua Society, 2024).

Curating Pacific Art in the United States: A Roundtable Discussion

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

On February 16, 2024, the North American chapter of the Pacific Arts Association hosted a panel at the 112th College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference in Chicago. Chaired by Sylvia Cockburn (Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow) and Maggie Wander (senior research associate) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this roundtable invited Halena Kapuni-Reynolds, associate curator of Native Hawaiian history and culture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), and Ingrid Ahlgren, curator for Oceanic collections at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, to share updates on their current projects and discuss critical issues in Oceanic art curation. The discussion centered on community engagement and critical methodologies grounded in Pacific epistemologies, the ethical and sociopolitical issues around museum collection and display, how to engage with different audiences (especially in the...

Obituary: Roger Boulay (1943—2024)

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Roger Boulay (1943–2024) devoted the majority of his professional life to building an inventory of Kanak material culture from New Caledonia. In 1979, Jean-Marie Tjibaou had passed the idea for this project on to Boulay, who immediately set to work in New Caledonia and in European museums. In 1982, he became a part-time curator at the National Museum of the Arts of Africa and Oceania in Paris, and began reorganizing that museum collection and its displays. In subsequent years he created or co-commissioned an amazing variety of exhibitions, in Paris, Nouméa, and elsewhere. He often looked at objects from unexpected angles, preferring the critical eye of the craftsman he had been. From 1993 to 1998, Boulay worked in Nouméa as a member of the team that was key to bringing the Centre Culturel Tjibaou to functioning. Roger Boulay passed away on July 2, 2024.

The Āpuakehau Stream, its Role in Waikīkī, and Muliwai (2022)

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Artist Kaili Chun discusses her sculptural installation Muliwai (2022), located in Waikīkī Market, Honolulu, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. A muliwai is an estuary formed at the intersection where the wai (fresh water of the mountains) meets the kai (salt water of the sea). Chun reflects on the importance of the muliwai ecosystem that sustains plant, animal, and human life; how urban development has impacted this rich environment; and the need for people to recognize the interconnectedness of all things and their responsibility of environmental stewardship. The site-specific sculpture connects viewers to the memory of this place in Waikīkī and invites us to reflect on our relationship with nature and appreciate the delicate balance that sustains life.

Book Series Review: Pacific Presences, 9 vol., Nicholas Thomas (general editor)

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Book series review: Nicholas Thomas, general editor, Pacific Presences, 9 volumes, Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2018–2021.

Pacific Presences: A Retrospect

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This essay is a reflection on the five-year research project “Pacific Presences: Oceanic Art and European Museums,” which was supported by the European Research Council from 2013 to 2018. It highlights the very rich and still largely under-researched potential of Oceanic collections across smaller and larger European museums, as well as the benefits of collaborative, collections-based research for communities and source nations across the Pacific.

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 24, No. 1 (2024)

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 24, No. 1 (2024) Full Issue

Creative Practice and Pedagogy with the Marshall Islands: Navigating a Critical Call-and-Response

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This essay brings together creative practice and pedagogy centered on the Marshall Islands to examine how poetry and politics, used together as a critical call-and-response strategy, can contribute to the achievement of climate and nuclear justice for that country. The first part of the essay discusses my work-in-progress documentary film, Her Excellency, which focuses on the stories of women who are heads of state—in particular, the women I met and interviewed in the Marshall Islands in August 2018. The second part describes how I incorporated the film’s stories from the Marshall Islands into an ecomedia film course I taught in spring 2022. While the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily halted the film’s production, I continued my creative practice and research in the remote-learning classroom, where I established a spirit of co-inspiration with my ecomedia students. In the first half of a semester focused on the Marshall Islands, students critically and creatively considered...

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 24, No. 1 (2024)

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts Vol. 23 No. 2 (2023-24) Cover & Table of Contents

Photographing Matrilineal Power and Prestige in the Hawaiian Kingdom

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article analyzes three portrait photographs from the 1850s that visually emphasize the importance of kinship and genealogy for the aliʻi (chiefly class) , through their representation of two high-ranking women: Queen Kalama and Princess Victoria Kamāmalu. It argues that during this period, portrait photographs became a new way of displaying and manifesting meaningful matrilineal connections that had political consequences for elite Hawaiians, particularly the connection between aliʻi wahine (chiefly women) and political power in Hawaiʻi. This research indicates that aliʻi engagement with photography, rather than merely copying Euro-American visual forms, used Hawaiian ontologies and epistemologies as its crucial starting points.

Exhibition Review: Project Banaba, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Exhibition Review: Project Banaba, curated by Katerina Teaiwa, Yuki Kihara, Joy Enomoto, Healoha Johnston, and Pūlama Lima. Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Kaiwiʻula, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, November 4, 2023–February 18, 2024.

Announcements

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Calls for participation, conferences, exhibitions, new publications, position announcements, PAA membership

Partnership, Collaboration, and Community Engagement: Reflections on Applied Repatriation in a Small Museum

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia is the only museum outside of Australia dedicated to the exhibition and study of Indigenous Australian arts and cultures. From 2019 to 2021, Kluge-Ruhe partnered with the Return of Cultural Heritage program of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies to facilitate the return of cultural heritage items to Arrernte, Warlpiri, and Warumungu communities in Australia. Through such collaborative partnership with larger organizations, small museums like Kluge-Ruhe can plan, document, and implement large-scale, long-range projects like unconditional repatriation to Indigenous Australian communities. Such endeavors also help prepare smaller institutions for future projects, including internal policy writing and continued community engagement.

Recollections: Australian Connections, Collaborations, and Collections in the Sepik Region of Papua New Guinea, 1960s–1970s

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
This paper traces collecting practices and field research in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea during the 1960s and 1970s, when there was heightened interest in the cultural heritage of Papua New Guineans in Australia. It begins with William Dargie, chairman of the Commonwealth Arts Advisory Board, who went to the Sepik in 1968–69. It then investigates the collecting activities of several other Australians working in the Sepik region at that time: Robert MacLennan, Helen and Paul Dennett, and Percy and Renata Cochrane. The paper also discusses exhibitions and collaborative projects that have arisen from these collections and field trips, signalling that a wealth of information remains to be discovered by researchers examining these archives.

Book Review: Rapa Nui Theatre: Staging Indigenous Identities in Easter Island, by Moira Fortin Cornejo, 2023

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Book review: Moira S. Fortin Cornejo, Rapa Nui Theatre: Staging Indigenous Identities in Easter Island, London andNew York: Routledge, 2022. ISBN: 9781032277356, 226 pages, 33 black-and-white illustrations. Hardback $170.00, Ebook $52.95.

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 23 No. 2 (2023-24)

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts Vol. 23 No. 2 (2023-24) with Special Section: PAA-E Conference

Special Section on Pacific Arts Association– Europe’s Annual Meeting: “Gendered Objects in Oceania,” Part 2

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Fanny Wonu Veys, president of the Pacific Arts Association–Europe, describes the 2022 annual meeting held at the Musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac in Paris. She introduces five essays based on papers presented at the meeting, focused on the theme “Gendered Objects in Oceania.”

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 23 No. 2 (2023-24)

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts Vol. 23 No. 2 (2023-24) with Special Section: PAA-E Conference

Shell Rings of Power: Gender Relations in Material Culture Production on the Aitape Islands, Papua New Guinea

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
This article first introduces shell ornaments and pottery on the Aitape Islands in New Guinea, discussing the role of women in their production during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It then turns to material culture produced by men—cult houses and canoes—that depended on supplies obtained by trading women’s products like shell valuables. By discussing these two gendered art forms together, this article shows how integral women’s labour was to the larger social and economic structures in New Guinea that have predominantly been associated with men. It concludes by discussing how colonisation, missionisation, and the introduction of a monetary economy impacted the gendered relations of art production in the islands.

Between the Betweenness: Restoring the Vā

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Artist and designer Linda Vaʻaelua’s work explores her identity as a female of mixed Samoan and Scottish heritage who grew up as part of the Samoan diaspora in Aotearoa New Zealand. She reflects on cultural and language loss, vā (relational space), and weaving cultures together harmoniously. She expresses her gafa (genealogy) through her arrangement of patterns, shapes, colours, composition, and materials.

Studying and Conserving a Barkcloth from the Musée Cantonal d’Archéologie et d’Histoire, Lausanne, Switzerland

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
This research note presents a conservation project of a Polynesian barkcloth belonging to the Musée Cantonal d’Archéologie et d’Histoire in Lausanne, Switzerland. The aims of this project were to deepen existing knowledge about the history of this barkcloth using information gathered from available archives, to place it in time using macro- and microscopic observations and analysis of its materials, to place it geographically through a comparison with other barkcloth pieces kept in different museums, and to consolidate and secure the object for future studies or exhibitions.

The Mataisau Clan of Fiji: Roles and Responsibilities

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Mataisau is the Fijian word relating to a clan in Fiji known as the “born carpenters.” They were a group of individuals gifted with carpentry skills—especially in building houses, boats, furniture, and tools—passed down by their ancestors through many generations. My paper is devoted to highlighting the role of the mataisau and to reaffirm how highly regarded and integral they were to Fijian society. I believe it is a traditional role that has been undervalued, underappreciated and overlooked in the literature of Pacific ethnobotany and cultural studies. Visitors to Fiji and the Pacific two centuries ago documented the vast botanical knowledge possessed by the Indigenous islanders. They utilised this knowledge to access and extract plants and trees for their survival. The islanders then incorporated a barter system to trade and exchange resources to which they did not have access. One such example was the trade route between Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. Over many centuries,...

Adorning the Ears: On Marquesan Ear Ornamentation

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
This article explores historical developments in ear adornment on the Marquesas Islands by examining their descriptions in historical sources—both written and pictorial—and ear ornaments in museum collections. From the first historical records onwards, Marquesan men and women were reported to have pierced earlobes, but the extent to which outsiders observed they wore ornaments in their ears changed over time. Four main types of ear ornaments are discussed and placed in a historical perspective. Large, oval-shaped wooden ones (kouhau) were worn by men of rank and S-shaped ear ornaments made of turtle shell (uuhei) were worn by women. Oval-shaped ear ornaments made from whale tooth (haakai) were worn by certain women and men in a ritual context. The last type, composite ear ornaments with a shell front (pūtaiana), of which a typology is presented, seems to have changed both in appearance and gender-use over time; initially they were worn by a few men, later on more men wore...

Announcements

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000
Calls for papers & participation, PAA membership, advertisements, new publications, position announcements

“Tattoo the Women, but Not the Men”: Female Tattooing in Tonga

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Whether the tattooing of women was practiced in Tonga before the general ban on tattooing in 1839 is debated among both researchers and the contemporary tattooist community. This research note explores oral histories, written sources, and pictorial materials to paint a balanced picture of the history of female tattooing in Tonga and possibly break gender binaries.

Media Review: Kanohi ki te Kanohi: The Living Portrait (2021)

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Kanohi ki te Kanohi: The Living Portrait (2021, 21 minutes) is a video collaboration between Māori and other Pacific artists who were producing portraits in their studios in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Produced and directed by Regan Balzer and edited by Grant Triplow, it features work by Shane Tuaeu Andrew (Cook Islands), Regan Balzer (Aotearoa), Kauanoe Chang (Hawaiʻi), Turumakina Duley (Aotearoa, living in Australia), Michelle Estall (Aotearoa), Tanya Leef (Aotearoa), Rangimoana B. Morgan (Aotearoa), James Ormsby (Aotearoa), Taniela Petelo (Tonga), Vaihere Vaivai (Tahiti), and John Walsh (Aotearoa).

Exhibition Review: Paradise Camp at the Aotearoa/New Zealand Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Paradise Camp, an immersive exhibition of Yuki Kihara’s artworks first presented at the 59th Venice Biennale, was curated by Natalie King with Ioana Gordon-Smith, assistant Pasifika curator. Kihara is the first Pasifika, Asian, and faʻafafine (“in a manner of a woman,” third gender) artist to represent Aotearoa/New Zealand at the international art show. Inspired by an essay by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the exhibition features twelve new photographic works alongside a “Vārchive” of the artist’s research materials and a remix of a five-part “talk show” created in 2018. Through a camp aesthetic, Kihara presents a faʻafafine perspective that decolonizes paradise and gender, argues for community solidarity, and fosters intentional stewardship of the environment in response to climate change, among other topics. The Venice Biennale installation invokes the Sāmoan theory of vā and is accompanied by solidarity programming, an immersive website, and an extensive exhibition...

In Memoriam: Lily Laita (1969–2023)

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Tautai Pacific Arts Trust in Tāmaka Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand, remembers and honors the artist Lily Laita.

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 23 No. 1 (2023)

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts Vol. 23 No. 1 (2023) with Special Section: PAA-E Conference

Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 23 No. 1 (2023)

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts Vol. 23 No. 1 (2023) with Special Section: PAA-E Conference

Complexly Gendered Objects: An Analysis of a Piece of Tevau Collected by Wilhelm Joest on Nendö

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
In 1897, German anthropologist and collector Wilhelm Joest spent the last three months of his life on Nendö, Santa Cruz Islands, assembling an extensive ethnographic collection. It includes a piece of tevau, or “feather money,” originally used by the islands’ inhabitants to pay bride price or purchase female concubines, among other things. This paper explores this artefact’s various gendered layers of meaning. Used to transform women into the collective property of Nendö men’s associations, tevau was already gendered and charged with sexualised meaning before being collected. This made it attractive to Joest, who had always recorded non-European sexualities with an ethnopornographic voyeurism. The object, I argue, reveals a complexly gendered collecting situation and Joest’s tentative affinity with the men of Nendö based on an (assumed) shared patriarchal outlook. As such, the history of Joest’s collecting is relevant both to the presentation of tevau in Western museums and cultural...

Special Section on the 2022 Meeting of Pacific Arts Association–Europe: “Gendered Objects in Oceania,” Part 1

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Fanny Wonu Veys, president of the Pacific Arts Association–Europe, describes the 2022 organisation’s annual meeting held at the Musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac in Paris. She introduces three essays based on papers presented at the meeting, focused on the theme “Gendered Objects in Oceania.”

Exhibition Review: Ancestry and Kinship in Yolŋu Curation

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
The author reviews the exhibition Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala, held at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 4–December 4, 2022; and the Katzen Arts Center, American University, Washington, DC, February 4–May 14, 2023. The exhibition’s tour continues at The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, February 3–July 14, 2024; and Asia Society, New York, September 24, 2024–January 5, 2025.

Exhibition Review: Hawaiʻi Triennial 2022: Pacific Century—E Hoʻomau no Moananuiākea

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
An exhibition review of the Hawaiʻi Triennial 2022: Pacific Century—E Hoʻomau no Moananuiākea that was presented February 18 through May 8, 2022, in Honolulu, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. Organized by Hawaiʻi Contemporary, the triennial was on view at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Foster Botanical Garden, Hawaii Theatre Center, Hawaiʻi State Art Museum, Iolani Palace, Honolulu Museum of Art, and Royal Hawaiian Center. It was curated by Dr. Melissa Chiu in collaboration with associate curators Dr. Miwako Tezuka and Drew Kahu‘āina Broderick.

Johnny Penisula (1941–2023), A Few Memories

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Karen Stevenson’s memories of the Aotearoa New Zealand-based Sāmoan artist Johnny Penisula (1941–2023).

“Who Are We Without Land?”: Climate Change, Place, and Identity in the Work of Joycelin Kauc Leahy

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
This research note describes the work of Joycelin Kauc Leahy, an artist, writer, curator, and climate activist. The author focuses on the ways Leahy addresses the relationship between climate change, land, and identity—especially in Papua New Guinea—through her research, curatorial projects, and illustrated children’s literature.

ComCard Pacific Phonecards and Presentation Folders from the Republic of Nauru

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
This research note describes ComCard Pacific phonecards from the Republic of Nauru as well as phonecard presentation folders. Eighteen phonecards are identified and classified into five thematic groups based on the images they feature. Their varying visual themes suggested that issues such as wildlife conservation, religious values, and immigrant communities were central in Nauru from the mid 1990s through the 2000s. The article also describes two phonecard presentation folders that promoted tourism and wetland conservation in the Republic of Nauru in 1995.

“Maisin is Tapa”: Engendering Barkcloth Among the Maisin of Papua New Guinea

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores the interplay between gender and barkcloth, or tapa, among the Maisin people living along the shores of Collingwood Bay in Papua New Guinea. Tapa features in Maisin economic, political, social, and spiritual life as an object of wealth that is both alienable and inalienable. It constitutes beliefs and values about gender relations and identity, mediating relations between the individual and the social. At the same time, tapa connects the living with the ancestors, God, and the church. In short, tapa is intertwined with all aspects of Maisin life. While in earlier publications I have detailed the gendered manufacturing and use of tapa in various settings, in this paper I bring this work together, highlighting how barkcloth is not just a gendered object, but crucial in creating gendered embodiments and performances, and, as such, experiences of gender identity.

Event Review: E Hō Mai Ka ʻIke: Celebrating the Launch of the Edith Kanakaʻole Quarter, Hilo, Hawaiʻi, May 5–6, 2023

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
In 2022, Edith Kekuhikuhipuʻuoneonāaliʻiōkohala Kenao Kanakaʻole (1913–1979) was selected to be featured on a U.S. quarter as part of the American Women Quarters program, a collaboration between the United States Mint, the Smithsonian’s American Women’s History Museum (AWHM), the National Women’s History Museum, and the Congressional Bipartisan Women’s Caucus that celebrates the accomplishments and contributions of American Women to a variety of fields. In 2023, the United States Mint and the AWHM partnered with Hawaiʻi Community College, the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, and the Edith Kanakaʻole Foundation to organize a celebration of the quarter’s release. Collectively titled E Hō Mai Ka ʻIke: Celebrating the Launch of the Edith Kanakaʻole Quarter, the two-day event (May 5–6, 2023) showcased the vitality and innovative forms of contemporary Native Hawaiian visual and performing arts—a testament to Aunty Edith’s enduring legacy as it continues on through her descendants and...

Announcements

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Calls for papers & participation, PAA membership, advertisements, new publications, position announcements

Tātara e maru ana: Renewing Ancestral Connections with the Sacred Rain Cape of Waiapu Kōkā Hūhua

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
This photo essay is based on the artist’s doctoral research and exhibition Tātara e Maru Ana—The Sacred Rain Cape of Waiapu. The PhD thesis interrogated the history of photography in Ngāti Porou to show how lens-based image-making can enact Mātauranga Waiapu: cultural knowledge systems specific to this place and oriented to the restoration of the Waiapu River and the wider taiao or environment. The creative works in the project critically adopt the strategies of landscape photography to activate transformative relationships among iwi and hapū in recognition of the degradation of Te Riu o Waiapu by settler colonial practices of deforestation.

Albert Wendt: Writing in Color

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
Between 2004 and 2008, celebrated Sāmoan writer Albert Wendt held the Citizens’ Chair in the Department of English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. By 2007, Wendt had completed twenty-seven paintings, each one a visual ode to the land and people of Hawai‘i. These paintings were featured in his first art exhibition, held at the Louis Pohl Gallery in Honolulu in 2007. This piece is a review of that exhibition, Le Amataga: The Beginning, along with an interview with Wendt that took place soon after the exhibition opened.

-/+peace = @.edu

Sun, 5 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000
In -/+peace = @.edu, an ongoing work of images and poems that will include multiple series, artist Cheryl Nohealani Olivieri explores home in Hawaiʻi as a place of fragmentation—where natives, islanders, residents, and visitors become entangled and call into question the production of identities amidst postwar shifts in geo-political relations.

Book Review: Women Photographers of the Pacific World, 1857–1930

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Book review: Anne Maxwell, Women Photographers of the Pacific World, 1857–1930, New York : Routledge, 2020 . ISBN: 9781032174655, 334 pages, black and white illustrations. S oftcover $USD 48.95.

Introduction to “Site and Materials”

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This essay introduces the “Site and Materials” section of “Grounded in Place: Dialogues between First Nations Artists from Australia, Taiwan, and Aotearoa,” a special issue of Pacific Arts. Employing a range of media, from bull kelp to industrial steel wool and rami fibre, artists Mandy Quadrio (Australia) and Yuma Taru (Taiwan) discuss their respective artistic practices in relation to the loss and recovery of ancestral and creative connections with Country and community. Their essays reflect upon the past and the impact of colonisation on Indigenous communities and cultural traditions. They also demonstrate the increasingly important role artists play in raising awareness about the survival of Indigenous peoples and cultural practices, and the value of the environment for future generations.

Evocations: A Visual Song/Poem for Canaipa

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Evocations is a video work made from photographs taken at the conservation-zoned Turtle Swamp Wetlands on Canaipa (Russell Island) in southern Moreton Bay, Quandamooka Country, Queensland, Australia. The accompanying poem is a written response to the images, and evokes their sense of movement and energy.

Grounded in Place: Dialogues between First Nations Artists from Australia, Taiwan, and Aotearoa

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This paper introduces “Grounded in Place: Dialogues between First Nations Artists from Australia, Taiwan and, Aotearoa,” a special issue of Pacific Arts. It provides background information about the October 2021 online symposium of the same name, which brought together nineteen First Nations artists, filmmakers, and curators, along with non-Indigenous scholars and museum professionals, from Australia, Taiwan, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Philippines. The symposium explored the relationships that First Nations creative practitioners in the Indo-Pacific region have to the land and sea. Each symposium speaker discussed their creative practice in relation to their panel’s theme: history and sovereignty, land and community, site and materials, or place and space.
The journal issue comprises written and visual essays, an interview, poetry, and reflective pieces from symposium participants. The contributions are based on the participants’...

Introduction to “Land and Community”

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This essay introduces the second section of “Grounded in Place: Dialogues between First Nations Artists from Australia, Taiwan and, Aotearoa,” a special issue of Pacific Arts. “Land and Community” includes papers written by First Nations artists Judy Watson (Australia), Akac Orat (Taiwan), and Areta Wilkinson (Aotearoa New Zealand). These artists discuss their recent works that investigate the land and water as sources of learning, places of ancestral affiliation, parts of their community and ethnic identity, sites of contestation, and places through which to assert sovereignty in the face of the lasting effects of coloni s ation.

Special Issue "Grounded in Place: Dialogues between First Nations Artists from Australia, Taiwan, and Aotearoa"

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000
Pacific Arts N.S. Vol. 22 No. 2 (2022)

Preparations for Landing—Paemanu: Tauraka Toi

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Since 2018, a kin group of Kāi Tahu contemporary artists called Paemanu has worked collaboratively with the Dunedin Public Art Gallery (DPAG)—established in 1884 and home of the oldest art collection in Aotearoa New Zealand—to see Māori values and concepts introduced into and intersect at the art institution. The group’s goals have been realised through the collaborative permanent collection exhibition Hurahia ana kā Whetū: Unveiling the Stars at DPAG (June 2021– April 2023 ); the enhanced role of the DPAG curatorial intern; the exhibition He reka te Kūmara (November 2021–March 2022) by emerging Māori curators; the establishment of the Paemanu Art Collection; and Paemanu’s self-determined exhibition at DPAG, Paemanu: Tauraka Toi—A Landing Place (December 2021–April 2022). This article discusses and celebrates the ways Kāi Tahu Māori contemporary visual...

Snail Paradise Trilogy: A Series by Chang En-man

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In 1933, a Japanese colonial official introduced the giant African snail (Achatina fulica), originally from East Africa, to Taiwan from Singapore to be raised for food. Since 2009, I have given presentations on this snail, including projects involving recipes, embroidery, maps, interviews, collaborations, and multimedia work. My inspiration comes from my Paiwan (an Indigenous group in Taiwan) mother, who would always gather snails after the rain, cook them, and give them to my siblings and me to eat. Snails were the starting point for my research into my maternal bloodline, which is part of the Taiwanese Indigenous bloodline. From there, I considered how the path of the snail’s dispersal is comparable to the route of imperial expansion in the Pacific, and looked at Taiwan’s history and its relationship to the world. This paper considers my evolving project centered around the giant African snail and offers my thoughts on how traditional Indigenous Taiwanese cooking...

Media Review: Te Pae: Exploring the Realms

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Media review: Te Pae: Exploring the Realms. Series of three online performances, approximately ninety minutes each, 2022. Performed by Regan Balzer, Horomona Horo, and Jeremy Mayall, with Troy Kingi, Maisey Rika, Waimihi Hotere, and Kurahapainga Te Ua.

Across Country: Waterlines

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This visual essay is an edited transcript of a presentation delivered by Judy Watson given in the 2021 symposium “Grounded in Place: Dialogues Between First Nations Artists from Australia, Taiwan, and Aotearoa.” The artist speaks of her Waanyi Country, near Boodjamulla National Park (Lawn Hill Gorge) in north-west Queensland, Australia, and discusses a number of her artworks that reflect her ongoing investigation into water, massacres, and connections to Country.

Belatedly and Finally: The Early Time of the Indigenous in the Concurrent Contemporary

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This essay discusses the uneasy process of mediating material that is assigned the term “Indigenous” and its variations, including “folk,” “customary,” “ethnic,” “Aboriginal,” and “First Nation,” among others. These terms are, in turn, set against a range of dominant rubrics, such as “national,” “modern,” and “Western”—a contrast that may catalyse assimilation or incite resistance. This fraught process plays out in various ways through the writing of art history, the curating of contemporary art, and the organisation of a national modern art collection and representation of living traditions. This essay shares the unease, as well as the productive effort, in struggling with these problematics, which implicates the very condition of nature and the well-being of the species. It annotates experiences in two specific settings: the nation-state and the contemporary biennale. This reflection on practice is intended to initiate conversations on how the Indigenous is constitutive...

Coastal Cannibals: Industry and Occupation on Whangārei Te Rerenga Paraoa

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Coastal Cannibals is a photographic series exploring the impacts, contradictions, and possibilities of “development” within Whangārei Te Rerenga Paraoa (Whangārei Harbour). Located on New Zealand’s northeastern coast, Whangārei Harbour is a site of significant cultural, ecological, and historical significance for the different iwi (tribes) and hapū (subtribes) who have resided—and continue to reside—there. For these tribes, maintaining unbroken occupation has not been straightforward; the harbour is a contested and still-consumed space. Iwi and hapū contend with heavy industry, residential developments, and regional policies that both disregard tribal authority and disrupt kaitiakitanga (guardianship relations). Coastal Cannibals focuses on the harbour’s shoreline developments, where industry is both a source of tension for iwi and hapū, as it places huge pressures on the ocean and surrounding environs,...

Seeking Gender Identity in the Contexts of Atayal: An Art Project

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines and seeks to challenge fixed ideas relating to identity, gender, and belonging, which I explore in my art practice. Focusing on a central work, Perhaps She Comes From/To __ Alang, I explore ways that virtual reality—in a video and a website—can be employed to define and engage with my Indigenous and queer identity. This work uses digital video, performance, and cyberspace to reconstruct a sense of place and space that disengages from the traditional gender(ed) norms of what it means to be Atayal. My disconnected urban context prompts me to question what counts as an authentic pathway to reconnect with gaga (Atayal customs and traditional values). The journey of returning to a preconstructed identity needs to be redefined and discussed to embrace a queer sense of belonging. This paper engages with these notions by discussing cyberspace, live performance, and video installation as alternative spaces in which to thread indigeneity,...

Introduction to “History and Sovereignty”

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This essay introduces the second section of “Grounded in Place: Dialogues between First Nations Artists from Australia, Taiwan and, Aotearoa,” a special issue of Pacific Arts. “History and Sovereignty” includes papers by First Nations artists Vernon Ah Kee (Australia), Chang En-Man (Taiwan), and the Kaihaukai Collective (Aotearoa/New Zealand).

Media Review: Whakapapa/Algorithms

Sun, 11 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Media review: Whakapapa/Algorithms. Film, 22 minutes, digital video and sound, 2021. Directed by Jamie Berry; distributed by CIRCUIT Artist Moving Image. Purchasing information available at https://www.circuit.org.nz