The Botanist

asian diasporic visual cultures and the americas 1 (2015) 179-183 brill.com/adva The Botanist Alexander Lee Guest Artist Lecturer, Centre des Métiers d’Art de Polynésie Française, Tahiti [email protected] The Botanist is a new series of works where I revisit the theme of the uru (breadfruit), continuing my investigation into the cultural narratives of the island of Tahiti, where I grew up. The breadfruit tree and its leaves appeared to me as a subject as I was raking leaves in my hometown of Mahina (Tahiti), a meditative gesture I have been accustomed to since my childhood: the sound of the metal rake on moist earth, the cracking of dried leaves under the towering trees, and finally the fire to dispose of it all and ward off mosquitoes and evil spirits. It was all there. There is a Tahitian legend that tells the story of Rua-ta’ata, a man who trans- formed his body into a breadfruit tree in order to save his family from famine. As a child I was fascinated by the images this legend conjured: the transformation of Rua-ta’ata’s body into a tree trunk, his arms into branches, hands into leaves, and his head into a fruit to be eaten by his own wife and children. It is fantastical, cannibalistic, sensual, almost biblical, and talks about survival, sac- rifice, and perenniality. Gilles Deleuze wrote about the concept of “becoming animal” and in this case, I wondered how one could become vegetal. Uru also has a colonial history. On his first voyage of discovery, James Cook landed in Matavai Bay—in the district of Mahina—with the mission to follow the Transit of Venus. He had a botanist onboard, Joseph Banks, who discovered the breadfruit during that stay. Back in England, Banks became President of the Royal Society and would be the instigator of the 1789 hms Bounty expedition to Tahiti, with the mission of gathering breadfruit plants to cultivate in order to feed slaves in the Caribbean. In 1932 Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall popularized the expedition’s events in their novel Mutiny on the Bounty. The book was subsequently adapted several times into Hollywood films starring Clark Gable (1935), Marlon Brando (1962), and Mel Gibson (1984). In this narrative of transplantation, I wanted to talk about the history of the Hakka Chinese people in Tahiti (my own ethnic lineage) and their arrival on the island, first as labourers in plantations, and in subsequent waves, as migrants and traders. My uncle, an agronomist, would show us how to graft © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/23523085-00101011 <UN> 180 Lee certain varieties of fruits together; we would then plant them and see how the fruits turned out. Here again, nature was a place of discovery and experimentation. There are five narratives which intersect at all times in The Botanist: Teuira Henry’s Tahitian legend of Rua-ta’ata, James Cook’s first voyage of discovery and Joseph Banks’ Florilegium, James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff’s Mutiny on the Bounty, Paul Gauguin’s Noa Noa, and Jack London’s The Chinago. In the studio, it was important for me to find a way to embed these reflec- tions into the production of the works. The use of botanical motifs in Polynesian life was the starting point. I used leaves from the uru tree in my childhood home, dipped them in ink, and hand-pressed them onto sheets of polypropyl- ene. The technique is called nature printing, which evoked for me both early botanical expeditions and the invention of the printing press. The compositions are reminiscent of Polynesian head ornaments and neck- laces made with plants, large traditional tapa (bark cloth), handmade pareos (wrap-around skirts), celestial navigation maps, floral bouquets, herbaria, botanical illustrations, etc. The works reproduced here are specifically about Rua-ta’ata and his transformation. Alexander Lee was born in Stockton, ca, and grew-up in Tahiti, French Polynesia. He earned his bfa from the School of Visual Arts, his mfa from Columbia University, and mps from New York University. Lee’ s trilogy, THE DEPARTURE OF THE FISH, titled after the creation myth of the island of Tahiti, premiered at Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles in 2006 and at Clementine Gallery, New York in 2007. His subsequent projects, RECITATIONS FROM THE GREAT FISH CHANGING SKIES (2008), and EXPANDING-EEL-DEVOURER (2009) continue his interest in storytelling and the anthropic process. THE TUPAPAU WITHIN followed, a stage piece about the inner beasts at play in the creative process, was conceived with composer Keith Moore and workshopped at Newman Popiashvili Gallery between Dec 2010–Jan 2011 with the contribution of Gabriel Romero, Juliana Snaper, and the prism Quartet. He is currently Guest Artist Lecturer at the Centre des Métiers d’Arts de Polynésie Française. THE BOTANIST premiered at Collectors Contemporary, Singapore, in November 2014. Alexander Lee’s work can be viewed at www.alexanderleestudio.com. asian diasporic visual cultures and the americas 1 (2015) 179-183 <UN>.

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