Identity 6

Editor's Notes

• #5: Sllde4We have already examined the issue of Pacific identity from an Island immigrant and descent perspective. This lecture looks more broadly at identity as an artistic catalyst among Polynesian artists both within New Zealand, across the Pacific and more broadly as an element in the glocalisation of artistic practice.
• #6: Slide 5 The Bases of IdentityOur sense of ourselves, our cultural and personal identity, is constructed out of a wide range of feelings and experience. Its prime site of development is within our family circumstances – our immediate nuclear family – parents, siblings and grandparents, but also from our wider family – our whanau. This is particularly true of Polynesian families where ties are generally both closer and broader, extending in the case of Maori to the hapu (the sub-tribe) and iwi(the tribe). Identity is also framed within language – the indigenous language of origin, the variety of English of the immediate community and the language of the dominant culture. We also identify, sometimes more, sometimes less, with our ethnic origins, the community within which our family lives and plays a social role. We also identify with the gender patterns within our community, as well as our own disposition to a particular gender orientation. We are young or old, a child, young parents, pensioners, elders. In our lifetimes we all have different experience of the world at different stages of our biological developments. In other words our identity is patchwork.We should not forget either that this patchwork is never fixed or given, but is in a state of constant change throughout our lives, but, nevertheless, will always turn around the firm foundations of our early upbringing and experience of the world.
• #7: Slide 6 Community HistoryArt often reenacts and reinforces aspects of identity. It identifies the signifiers of a community – the visual markers, the signs and symbols, what might be called ‘the raiment’ of a community. Art can be used to celebrate the achievements of a community – real or supposed. It can be used to raise the tribulations of a community to the status of tragedy, ennoblement through suffering, the celebrated experience of a community over time.
• #9: Slide 8 The collaborative video work of Rachael Rakena and Brett Graham entitled Aniwaniwa – tehokingamai [The Journey Home] commemorates the communitu of the village of Horahora, on the shores of the rapids at the narrowest point of the Waikato River. The village was flooded in 1947 during the damming of the river for hydroelectric development. In that process historical sites related to Brett Graham’s hapu, NgatiKoroki, were drowned and lost their descendants. Graham’s grandfather subsequently worked at the hydro-electric station. The submersion of the village and historical sites is likened to the submersion of Maori culture through colonisation. Cultural identity is thus both changed and redefined, like the banks and course of the Waikato River. The bubbles in which images of the past float through the film are like wakahuia, the containers of precious memories. These containers are covered in a pattern suggesting the gnawed pathways of insects, gouging the wood, like the stone, and later, metal, of the carving tool, recalling the origin of the word whakairo, to carve, to eat through like an insect, and that the art of carving came from under the water, from the sacred realm of Tangaroa.Click open the links to more material about Aniwaniwa.[For the full story of the origins of Maori carving see HiriniMoko Mead, Te ToiWhakairo [The Art of Maori Carving] (Auckland: Reed, 1995), pp, 8-17]
• #10: Slide 9 Identity is related to concepts of the self. Some people see themselves as associated with communities that dominate a culture. Others have a sense that their identity is tied up with communities that have been, and remain, dominated by the cultures of Others. It is a matter not only of perception but also of cultural history.Polynesians often identify with their indigenous roots, traditions and heritage. Those who are immigrants with the islands of their childhood. Their descendants identify with the land of their parents’ origin. Those of mixed descent identify sometimes with their mother’s culture, sometime with their father’s. Whatever your own identity then those whose loyalty lies elsewhere are the Other, the Alter
• #11: Slide 9 Click open the links to learn more about the work of Reuben Paterson
• #12: Slide 10 Not all aspects of our identity are based upon ethnicity and heritage. Some are based upon our feeling, our beliefs, our way of life that are not necessarily those of our family and heritage. As adults we may be convinced of this or that set of ideas or ways of behaving. For example our sexual orientation is not always guided by our heritage but by a host of their factors. However we might feel more comfortable in, say, a gay community, than among heterosexuals.Reuben Paterson does not only celebrate his Maori heritage and the community of the peoples of the pacific, but also stands for a range of human rights, among which is the right to equal treatment both in the law and society as a whole, for the gay community.His glitter paintings not only evokes the light that shimmers from traditional Maori kowhaiwhai pattern but also uses the speckled surface as a reference to the gay world. His ‘provocation’ series reminds the viewer of the controversy surrounding the use of provocation used as a defence in crimes relating to violence against members of the gay community, as well as celebrating the joy of colour and patterned surfaces in the art of the Pasifika community in Aotearoa New Zealand.
• #13: Slide 14
• #21: *Tohi held his first solo exhibition at the Taco gallery in New Plymouth in 1986, called Matala, to bloom. His art became so well known that in 1987 he was commissioned to carve the doors for the New Zealand embassy in Saudi Arabia. In 1988 he returned to Tonga and made contact with traditional artists and carvers.  In the early nineties he began to use stone and steel together as media for his art, showing the results in 1994 at the exhibition Journeying Together at the Taranaki Museum in New Plymouth. As he said 'Tongan and Polynesian designs use a lot of lines in lashing, carving and weaving. I used the stainless steel for the structural lines, to make the connection, to relate to the past.' He sings Tongan chants whilst working - one associated with the making of a work and another of its completion.
• #22: For an audio interview with Filipe Tohi go to http://www.pasifikastyles.org.uk/mp3/tohi.mp3Also visit Filipe Tohi’s website http://www.lalava.net/nav.html
• #24: * Tohi claims that FrançoisMorellet, the French abstract painter is a significant influence. For Morellet see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Morellet
• #27: Margo Neale, principal curator, with Craddock Morton, Director, National Museum of Australia, at the official launch on 25 February 2008, in front of Big Yam, 1996, National Gallery of Victoria
• #29: Yunupingu’s source of inspiration is Garak the Universe, an important ancestral story – particularly for the Yolgnu of north-east Arnhem Land. Although Garak appears to be a literal representation of the Milky Way, Yunupingu has stated herself that her art is about the entire universe, all the stars that can be seen by the naked eye, and also everything that exists far beyond any scientific expedition or estimation – everything that can be imagined and all that cannot.In the Indigenous visual art scene many emerging artists, particularly those from more remote regions of Australia (that is, far from metropolitan art school training), are highly placed within their communities as ceremonial leaders and/or healers. Their profound knowledge is manifest in their art practice. So it is with Gumatj/Rrakpala artist Gulumbu Yunupingu, who is an important leader in her community at Yirrkala in North-East Arnhem Land. With connections to one of its most important cultural dynasties, and although relatively unknown in the art world only a few years ago, Yunupingu is now considered one of the most innovative of contemporary Indigenous artists.I first became aware of Gulumbu Yunupingu’s art at the 2004 Garma Festival of Traditional Culture[1], held annually at Gulkula, an outstation and important ceremonial site forty kilometres from Nhulunbuy in North-East Arnhem Land. Walking along a track towards an outcrop overlooking an escarpment, with the ocean vanishing in the distance, I was entranced by the sight of a cluster of stunning larrakitj (funerary hollow log coffins), of which one, covered in a swathe of shimmering ochre stars, held me transfixed. The shining galaxy depicted on this particular larrakitj led to me to seek out the artist’s identity.The installation was on loan from a private collection for the duration of the Festival, and each evening at dusk every larrakitj would be covered with a shroud to protect them from the quicksilver tropical elements. Will Stubbs, the co-ordinator at Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre (who is also Yunupingu’s son-in-law), oversaw this task. It was magical observing the light shift from palest pink through lavender and purple tones, with the luminescent moon rising over the sea and the first night stars commencing their trajectory, all accompanied by the sounds of Garma’s Bunggul (ceremonial performance) with the hypnotic resonance of the yidaki (didjeridu) in the near distance.[2]Yunupingu’s source of inspiration is Garak(the Universe), which in her work appears to represent the Milky Way, an important ancestral story especially for the Yolngu people of North–East Arnhem Land where the artist lives. However, she has said that her art is about far more than this: it incorporates the entire universe, all the stars that can be seen by the naked eye and everything that exists beyond scientific exploration; everything that can be imagined, and all that is beyond the imagination.Yunupingu’s high degree of skill and innovation in her work made her a clear choice for inclusion in the prestigious Australian Indigenous Art Commission for the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, which opened last year.[3] Working on the Commission necessitated visits by the curatorial team to North-East Arnhem Land, sitting down with Gulumbu in her country and hearing her clan’s customary stories handed down to her by her father, senior Yolngu law man Mungurruwuy Yunupingu[4], then gaining formal approval from her for the adaptation of her work of art into a design embedded into the building fabric in Paris, a hundred times larger than the original.On one of these visits I was fortunate be with Yunupingu when she collected a raw hollow log, which subsequently became a magnificent larrakitj. I saw her spot the right tree from a moving troopie (troop carrier: the vehicle of choice in Arnhem Land), then watched in amazement as this grandmother, her feet planted firmly on her land, swung an axe with colossal strokes, felling the tree with a minimum of fuss. A bonus was discovering three squawking baby red-wing parrots at the bottom of the hollowed-out trunk, perhaps placed there for protection by their mother as a cyclone had recently swept through the region. Yunupingu’s finished larrakitj is now part of the national collection and is included in Culture Warriors.At the official Sydney launch of the Commission for the Musée du quai Branly in December 2005, Gulumbu’s eloquent speech brought many to tears as she stressed the importance for her to share her art and culture with the world for future generations to see, long after she is physically gone from this earth, her spirit taking its place with her ancestors in the night sky above.This is from my heart, to you, to share, for the whole world to understand my culture.