Book and Media Reviews 273 Melani Anae *

book and media reviews 273 an acknowledgement and honoring duction as art, Paradise Now? Con- of his remarkable achievements as temporary Art from the Pacific— Pacific novelist, poet, artist, and play- thoughtfully curated by Melissa Chiu, wright extraordinaire! herself an Australian—has a very dif- Ia manuia le tapuaiga! (Blessed are ferent, political and conceptual edge. the nonparticipants; thank you for all Consisting of forty-five works by the moral support from those not fifteen contemporary artists, the directly involved.) central frame of this exhibition melani anae (accompanied and illuminated by an excellent catalog) lies in the artists’ University of Auckland engagement with influential images No diacritical marks were included in of the Pacific forged by eighteenth- Samoan and Maori words this review at century French and English explorers, the request of the reviewer. All transla- familiar images of insular, verdant tions by reviewer. islands with friendly, uninhibited people. The artists—some residents of *** New Zealand, but including Mäori, New Caledonian, Samoan, Fijian, Paradise Now? Contemporary Art Torres Strait Islander, Rotuman, and from the Pacific. Asia Societies Niuean—respond in different ways to Galleries, New York, New York, the confinements and concealments of 18 February–9 May 2004. the Paradise myth. With different particular histories, coming from differ- I was drawn to the recent exhibition ent islands, they also represent an of “Pacific” art at New York’s Asia emergent “Pacific” identity in the Society Galleries both because of its region, one more cosmopolitan and resonance with the thematic of Indige- distinct from the themes of the famil- nous art emerging in the world and iar Primitivism so vehemently rejected because the inclusion of New Zealand in critical writing over the past few represents a new, and challenging, step decades, and also one that does not for the Asia Society’s geographical disclaim its histories. orientation and its usual viewers. Different strategies and tactics of Aside from recognizing the presence engagement are employed. Some of of Pacific people in New York, the the works play with and subvert exhibition is a striking expression of ideas of Paradise—drawing attention the fit between the practices of con- to the degradation of the Pacific envi- ceptual and performance art and the ronment that has taken place in the circumstances of postcolonial indi- wake of European attention. Others geneity and diaspora. comment on the changing nature of Sixteen years ago, the exhibition local customs and cultures. They of Aboriginal Australian art at this foreground the emerging cosmopoli- gallery caused a fabulous stir of recog- tanism and changing relationships nition and response throughout New to local cultures cited and distanced York. If that exhibition addressed the through the migrations that have question of Aboriginal cultural pro- brought so many Islanders to New 274 the contemporary pacific • 17:1 (2005) Zealand, where twelve of the artists famous earlier Mäori exhibition, Te were born or now live. And still Maori, at the Metropolitan Museum others attend to the history of the in 1984, which was distinguished by region since European and US settle- the presence of Mäori cultural author- ment—a history marked by the pres- ities and marked by Mäori cultural ence of Christianity and the extraction authority itself. Indeed, like the Te of resources. This Paradise is scarred Maori theme, these figures seem self- and brutalized by extraction and consciously to articulate the uncer- threats to local traditions, shadowed tainty and insecurity of exchange by the pains of diaspora, and per- and exhibition. So I understand from ceived through the experiences of a fortuitous informal conversation childhood interrupted. This is post- with Mäori art historian Rangihiroa Primitive, post-tribal art, “cutting Panoho, who offhandedly suggested and mixing” very different from the that these figures bring in some of Caribbean diaspora in Britain, mainly the artist’s kin as protection in an springing from urban Polynesian set- unfamiliar world. Modeled on the tings and, as Karen Stevenson argues artist’s brother, the figures are like in her catalog essay, contributing having fifteen brothers here to pro- significantly to the awareness of a tect the artists. Assuredly, the deeper new regional identity. potentials of the work required more The exhibition is organized on two knowledge than many visitors in New floors of the building. As one enters York could be expected to have. the lobby on the first floor, one passes However, there is more to the by five models of male security fiberglass figures distributed through- guards—Pacific Islanders in black out the exhibition. Three other figures, suits, in a line, arms crossed. Four these wearing tuxedos, are modeled more are placed to the right, along on the artist’s father. Wearing a name- the stairs, two across the lobby, and tag that says, “Hello, my name is one more positioned in front of the Hori” (the Mäori translation of elevator. It is certainly impossible to George and a derogatory term for ignore the presence of these figures. Mäori people), the pejorative conno- The work of Michael Parekowhai, the tations of a Mäori underclass are fifteen clothed, cast-fiberglass figures powerfully dissonant with the coded of Kapahaka (2003), transforms the refinement of dress for a proper art usually invisible security guard into a gallery viewer. As Chiu’s essay notes, performance—implied by the use of “Parekowhai is playfully turning the word given to traditional Mäori assumptions about Maori people performing arts. While these seem on their head.” How much the appropriate to the heightened security New York viewer might recognize typical of contemporary New York this play is, of course, an issue, but City, the wall plaques inform the the figures certainly raise a question viewer that these also “suggest other in any visitor. issues related to the protection of The themes of different works Maori traditions.” I found them to throughout the exhibition resonate be an appropriate connection to the with each other, and together they are book and media reviews 275 able to communicate even to the pre- small video screens is shaped to sym- viously uninformed. What may suffer bolize the gateway at the entrance of most in an exhibition like this, one a Mäori courtyard and meetinghouse. for which the artists have little history The video works shown simultane- for viewers, may be the specificity of ously on the screens collectively particular works and their depth. address the familiar existence of so On the second floor, having passed many nineteenth-century Mäori por- through some of the guards, Denise traits. In preparing this work for New Tiavouane’s 1998 installation, The Zealand’s Te Papa Museum, Reihana Modern Dance (La Danse Moderne), went through a collection of these pairs two threatened aspects of portraits as a basis for her resignify- Noumean life—native forests (cleared ing Indigenous presence. The tactics for nickel mining) and male dance. of poststructuralism are turned to The combination of dancing poles (of Indigenous ends, inscribing the Indig- bamboo) and grass skirts connect the enous within the active space of reor- process of mining and clearing with ganizing what is and has been. Per- the increasing difficulty for locals to haps this makes the video work more get the stuff of daily cultural life. accessible in its strategies and repre- In a small gallery to the side, one sentational organization than some passes through an installation with of the other work in the exhibition, wooden carved shells and blue light- but the effect is visually spellbinding. ing to suggest the sea. John Ioane, a There are formally posed portraits of Samoan living in Christchurch, calls Mäori wearing European uniforms this construction Fale Sa (Sacred and clothing, as the artist dressed her Space). We are informed that it evokes friends in old-fashioned and contem- vivid, intense memories of his child- porary outfits and recorded them as if hood, with the ocean as a space for posing. They are no longer the silent, healing, and one moves through this passive ethnographic subjects of the to others of his installations—a large dominant gaze. wooden statue with metallic paint, There is something powerful to the tilting fernlike magical plants that effect in having moving video in imi- absorb viewers in organic forms— tation of portraits, in having the sub- resonant of what has been lost in jects hold a pose, emphasizing the migration and diaspora in search of smallest of movements—suspension work. Is this the world of childhood, of animation. One video sequence now imagined, fanciful, and undif- reenacts a photographer, with an old ferentiated? The forms of sculpture, camera, telling a woman how to pose. recognizable in a contemporary idiom, “Lie down here,” she is told. “Would are made to have a Pacific specificity, you be so good as to remove your but without as much bite as some of clothes?” Then the video cuts to the other work. swimsuit photos. Many others in the Unquestionably, the most powerful collection of screens are wearing con- and effective work in the exhibition is temporary clothes, posed as current the video installation of Lisa Reihana, Mäori subjects, in leisure suits and Native Portraits n. 19897. A bank of cut-off jean jackets. The installation 276 the contemporary pacific • 17:1 (2005) reminds the viewer that the old both Mäori and European sources. stereotypes still prevail, but the sheer Needlework, for example, presents range of images and poses (and the the island and the Mäori body as a quality of their making) is staggering. pincushion, crowded with the needles One is led into an intricate world of of conflicting territorial claims—the colonial relationships and mimicries, Union Jack as well as a cross and identifications and intimacies, more five-pointed star representing a Mäori nuanced and immediate than most guerilla fighter.

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