Paperskin: barkcloth across the Pacific - Queensland Art Gallery

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26 Pare’eva (mask) unknown Cook Islands, Mangaia, (attributed) Barkcloth, dye / 66cm x 30cm x 20cm / Collected by T.W. Kirk. Gift of Masonic Lodge, Paraparaumu, 1950 / Collection: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa This often happens when objects travel; when they are used to mediate new social situations in new places. in art forms such as music, dance, tattooing and oratory, there are innovations reflecting location-specific circumstances. The greater the distance that tapa (or other cultural products) travel in institutional, spatial and temporal terms, knowledge related to them becomes increasingly ‘partial, contradictory and differentiated’. 5 As ngatu or masi moves further from its place of origin, the narratives, knowledge and contexts that give meaning to it in one place fragment and become less clear, eventually reflecting new ‘local’ concerns, transmitting some key cultural messages, and taking on new ones. Tapa may be admired for their beautiful decoration, but they are also a medium for negotiating the politics of relationships and cultural identity. The further a group is away from home, the more charged or urgent expressions of ethnic or cultural identity can become. Groups of people will often temporarily seek out, latch onto and express identity through cultural practices in order to make sense of the particular circumstances in which they find themselves. serving this purpose, tapa does its ‘cultural’ work not only through the pigment that decorates its surface, but also through the fibres comprising the cloth itself. in the case of my grandfather’s burial casket, the ngatu in which it was wrapped was a way of reconnecting him to his island home, not through a cloth that was samoan, but through a cloth that was foreign to the cold clay soil, a cloth that was indigenous to a place beyond New Zealand’s shores. it also highlighted the fact that, while he lived the last decades of his life with us in New Zealand, he was of another place. he was a samoan, a Pacific islander, and the tapa helped to bridge this distance, reconnecting him to his island identity despite the ngatu’s Tongan motifs. similarly, my colleague’s wrapping of the trophy skulls in barkcloth was perhaps a means of reconnecting them with a tangible representation of something ‘Pacific’, a way of separating them and protecting them while they were in the liminal space of a museum storeroom. My colleague’s barkcloth wedding garment was beautiful, and the church itself was draped in an extravagant length of ngatu down the aisle. The dress was remarkable: its texture; its plain, natural colour; the heavy drape of the cloth. undecorated with the freehand motifs of a samoan siapo mamanu or the rubbed-on patterns of a siapo ’elei, observers remarked on its similarity to raw silk, its tactility. 6 For the wearer, the garment was valued more than for its cosmetic appearance, and reflected ‘a love and passion for things Pacific’. 7 in the examples i have described above, the functional value of barkcloth, as a decorated object, is less important than its symbolic value. On these occasions, barkcloth mediates and creates relationships; it bridges distance and time. The use of barkcloth in these situations shows that tapa mediates actions that are not solely reliant on the markings on its surface. The cloth itself can be important — the texture, the memory imbued in its layers, the worked fibres and the energy of the maker. While we know that the value attached to materials often affects the value attached to things, they are not the same. 8 The materiality of barkcloth, its geo-cultural origins and ‘otherness’ are aesthetic dimensions that are easily overlooked, but they are important in the Pacific island diaspora, and particularly in a world where the production of cultural material is less fixed and its movement more global. 27
in New Zealand, people share a range of meanings and value around tapa despite the culturally distinct manner in which they are marked. in the diaspora, tapa mediates a form of cultural recovery in a global maelstrom. i think that, for many Pacific islanders in New Zealand, regardless of their origins or descent, barkcloth is symbolic of an idealised past (or present) way of life that is geographically distant. Tapa is a tangible link to ‘a past’ as well as a signifier of cultural conditions in the present. indeed, Fijian Nina Nawalowalo has described masi as a ‘map back to my own cultural roots’ with ‘the fibres’ providing a way back ‘to a time and place’. 9 What the case studies above have in common is the deployment of tapa as a tool for bringing the past closer to the present. Tapa, like other cultural productions, is used in ‘the mediation of ruptures of time and history — to heal disruptions in cultural knowledge, historical memory, and identity between generations’, people and places. 10 in this way, people can lay claim to a cultural or ethnic identity through the process of using a ‘thing’, whether it is tapa, the haka, or tattoos. The ceremonies tapa mediates, like the events for which it serves as a backdrop, are expressions of connectedness. Ngatu is also made from synthetic material in transnational Tongan communities. like their organic counterparts, synthetic ngatu pieces are used in presentations, as wrappings, and are also given as gifts. Tongan ngatu artists who produce synthetic tapa indicate a preference for indigenous materials, but, they say, they will use synthetic tapa for their presentations if necessary. As anthropologist roger Neich has argued, for items of samoan cultural value such as the ie toga (cloth for toga) 11 , often the aesthetic focus is not only on how the item appears, but also what it represents for the event or context in which it mediates the ceremony and actions surrounding its presentation or use. This would explain how Tongan ngatu can be used at a samoan wedding, or a funeral, or worn by a samoan chief’s daughter in a performance. 12 This is not to say the markings on tapa’s paperskin are unimportant, but to highlight that they coexist with other dimensions of meaning and interpretation. We seek the ‘materiality’ of barkcloth not only for its markings but also for its qualities as something made by human hands, a cloth crafted. We seek its power to bring the past, people, history and the islands closer — to make them tangible. barkcloth connects us in a way that fascinates, entrances and inspires us. The meanings of barkcloth are as unfixed and changing as the identities of the people who use them. if an object’s value is dependent on context we cannot assume a completeness of cultural transmission despite an increasingly transnational and interconnected world. When thinking about barkcloth we have to consider disjunctions between the spaces where they originate and the meanings people give to, and make through, them in new locations. These circumstances create room for us to celebrate barkcloth as a form of beautifully inscribed paper skin from Pacific places distant in time and location. They also allow us to probe beyond this veneer for a significance that is deeper and closer to home. Sean Mallon is senior Curator, Pacific Cultures at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. 28 Siapo or Ngatu c.1955 Samoa or Tonga Barkcloth, dye / 176.5 x 84.7cm / Collected by Sir Guy Richardson Powles c. 1949-60. Gift of Michael Powles, 2001. Collection: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 29
Page 1 and 2: 2 Paperskin Barkcloth across the Pa
Page 3 and 4: Contents Foreword 6 Tony ellwood /
Page 5 and 6: Preface Nicholas Thomas since the e
Page 7 and 8: information in barkcloth designs is
Page 9 and 10: for the four-metre-high, three-pron
Page 11 and 12: ACKNOWleDGMeNT i would like to ackn
Page 13: Traffic in ideas and cultural mater
Page 17 and 18: 32 Marsang Papua New Guinea, b.1918
Page 19 and 20: y this crocodile barkcloth of their
Page 21 and 22: 40 Nerry Keme Papua New Guinea b.19
Page 23 and 24: Barkcloth 19th century Papua New Gu
Page 25 and 26: Barkcloth unknown Papua New Guinea
Page 27 and 28: Lepau 19th century Ihilland Solomon
Page 29 and 30: Barkcloth 19th century Papua New Gu
Page 31 and 32: 60 Stella Upia Papua New Guinea b.1
Page 33 and 34: 64 Siapo mamanu c.1905 Samoa Barkcl
Page 35 and 36: Mask unknown Papua New Guinea Oroko
Page 37 and 38: List of works 1 Dating of works in
Page 39 and 40: Selected bibliography Bonnemaison,
Page 41: Authors Maud Page Maud Page took up

Paperskin: barkcloth across the Pacific - Queensland Art Gallery

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