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Art and Identity in Vanuatu Haidy Geismar Indigenous Acrylic: Art and Identity in Vanuatu Haidy Geismar Introduction ing of the United Nations Forum of Indigenous Peoples Art is colonial. Art works can take you outside in 1996 (2002: 390). Kuper (2002: 395) suggests that of yourself, impose their values on you, make these indigenous rights movements generically utilize you see the world in a different way, get you on understandings of race, culture and biology that an- side and make you over afresh… Art gives us thropologists, and others, are intensely uncomfortable an opportunity to think again, and again, and with in other circumstances: again. (Anon. 1992: 13). the conventional lines of argument currently used to justify “indigenous” land claims his essay aims to dissect some of the tightly rely on obsolete anthropological notions [of Tmeshed connections between art objects and con- primitivism, race, and an opposition between cepts of the indigenous, drawing on fieldwork within culture and nature] and false ethnographic the marketplace for the growing contemporary arts vision. Fostering essentialist ideologies of movement in Vanuatu. At a time when the term ‘indig- culture and identity, they may have dangerous enous’ is increasingly fraught with political contesta- political consequences. tion in the global arena, a positive connection between art and indigeneity in the Pacific is only growing stron- The (ongoing) response to Kuper’s piece has varied ger [1]. Through the rendering of ideas and identities from measured to vehement critique (see Kenrick and in acrylic, wool, and wood, contemporary artists in Lewis 2004). Nearly all commentators have highlighted Vanuatu are able to synthesize global and local styles, the importance of acknowledging how ‘dangerous classification and values, providing some alternative politics’ have long and adversely affected indigenous resolutions to more analytic quandaries about the peoples, and the very real necessity for restitution cultural authenticity of their economic and political and empowerment for dispossessed and politically interests. Rather than promoting authenticity as an marginalized first peoples. As Suzman comments, absolute and external value judgment assessing the le- “San people are frustrated not because they cannot gitimacy of identity and economic and political entitle- pursue their “traditional culture” but because they ment, the dialogue and exchange engendered by the are impoverished, marginalized, and exploited by the production and transaction of artworks demonstrates dominant population” (2002: 400). It also remains a fact how authenticity is also a strategy used to establish that many groups of people share an understanding of important and efficacious ideas about local identity in what it means to be ‘native’, ‘first nation’, ‘fourth world’, cross-cultural context. ‘tribal’ or ‘indigenous’ with many other collectives from very different places around the world (see Smith In a controversial article, Adam Kuper (2002) mounted 1999), sharing a broad experience of cultural and a broad critique of the category ‘indigenous’ (and im- political encounter and co-option. Divisions between plicitly of those who use the term, whether they be colonized/colonizer, native/settler, black-brown-red/ native, activist or academic) that, if accepted entirely, white, to name but a few problematic but profound has serious ramifications for the present utility of the distinctions that feed into the criteria of who may be term. Drawing on his readings of the work of various defined as indigenous, are thus very real. What to make indigenous people’s movements concerned primarily then of Kuper’s challenge to their authenticity? with land restitution in Southern Africa, and North and South America, Kuper outlined and challenged the key Anthropologists working in the Pacific, especially notions he identifies as salient to the construction of those working with art and other kinds of cultural indigenous identities — a latent primitivism and cele- production, are particularly well suited to respond to bration of ‘nature’ as opposed to culture, a reliance on Kuper’s polemic. Kuper’s critique of primitivism and blood rights, and the elevation of an idealized (pre-co- identification of the political strategy surrounding lonial) mythic past into the political present. He noted many indigenous land claims intersects with a well- that such forgings of identity are also “popular with worn discussion that, whilst by no means unique to extreme right-wing parties in Europe”, citing the at- Oceanic anthropology, has played a defining role tempts of South African Boers to participate at a meet- within our discipline: the ‘invention of tradition’ (see Chapter 1. Indigenous Acrylic 9 Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983, Hanson 1989, Keesing Morphy and Perkins, 2006). Increasingly, artists, and and Tonkinson eds. 1981, Jolly and Thomas 1992, their work, have entered into these academic discus- Linnekin 1990). In the context of the growing battle for sions, not only as illustrations, but also as active par- empowerment and self-determination by native peoples ticipants (see Mithlo 2006). Over the past few years, living in lands later settled by others and, equally, by there has been growing collaborative engagement with post-colonial nations struggling for recognition on practicing artists, exemplified by the symposium from a world stage, Kuper exposes indigenous identities which this very volume emerges (and see Schneider to be politically contingent, and infinitely malleable and Wright 2005). Despite growing academic and po- even as they are promoted as timeless, natural kinds. litical dispute over the linkages between concepts of He deconstructs the concept of indigenous much as indigenous and land or law (see Brown 1998, 2003), anthropologists once did that of tradition or kastom, the connections between ‘indigenous’ and ‘art’ have and by extension nationalism. As with much of the been powerfully reinforced, celebrated and consumed early invention of tradition debates, Kuper himself in recent years. The intellectual sophistication and po- reifies terms such as invention, tradition and identity, litical activism of many native artists, coupled with the assuming that there may be some pristine (authentic) very real powers of art to reproduce, not just repre- meaning of each which is being corrupted by those sent, knowledge about the world increasingly informs with explicit political agendas. In doing so he crucially our critical analyses. It is this ability to merge diverse ignores local determinations and experiences of what opinion and discourse with culturally specific aesthet- it might mean to be native (see Gegeo 2001: 492, Smith ic forms that makes contemporary art in the Pacific a 1999, Trask 1991 [2]). powerful tool for discussions about cultural, local and national identities. Kuper is right to an extent: indigenous identities, like all identities, are political, contested and fraught with Working closely in dialogue with artists and their work controversy and dissent (both from within and from forces us to consider alternative forms of cultural ex- without) and there are provocative slippages between pression to our own, and to open our analyses to fresh indigenous and national identities. What is interesting perspectives and ways of understanding, and indeed to me is how ideas and discussions about art in the visualizing or experiencing, identity politics. As Fred Pacific may be seen to circumvent critiques such as Myers comments, referring to Aboriginal Australian Kuper, and how the anthropology of art has developed acrylic painting, “its real power and lasting value is a parallel form of communicating about indigeneity that it appears to be of “tradition” while violating it. and nationhood, one which acknowledges shared ter- This ambiguity constitutes its unsettlement” (2004: ritories as well as political inequalities; which shows us 263) and by extension the potential to unsettle main- that categories like ‘primitive’ and ‘modern’ or ‘nature’ stream political debates. The creative synthesis of, and culture are permeable and contingent. Perhaps and intellectual engagement with, diverse art worlds most importantly, this perspective also incorporates demonstrates how art practices are extremely fertile diverse voices, and media, into the analytic frame- ground for the expression, and even resolution, of pro- work, exemplified by the participants in this volume. vocative issues and more discursive divides. As Ngahiraka Mason, curator Maori at the Auckland Art Gallery has written: Indigenous artists contribute Kuper’s polemic emerges from the problematic of dis- and bring vitality to contemporary art and, inasmuch cursively policing the borders of cultural identity with as they provide sweeping panoramic views of a rap- tools that change shape and more often than not slip idly changing world, they also offer departure points out of ones hands. In this essay, I want to exploit the from which to discuss new directions... (Mason 2000: fluid tools of the anthropology of art and draw on my 24). The “post-postcolonial” imaginaries developed by own research in Vanuatu to emphasize how ni-Vanuatu many artists working in the Pacific offer “a counter- artists may empower and connect differing definitions discursive Aboriginal imaginary that is crucial to their of authenticity and the indigenous, to more construc- contemporary self-production” (Ginsberg and Myers tive and analytic, rather than dangerous political ef- 2006: 29). fect. It is here, I
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