Lisa Reihana’s T In Pursuit of Venus HE CO N Q U E R O R ’S E Y E KUMU ART MUSEUM 19.09.2019–26.01.2020 Curators: Linda Kaljundi, Eha Komissarov and Kadi Polli Coordinator: Mari Kangur Exhibition design and graphic design: AKSK It is virtually impossible to overestimate the importance of images in the history of colonialism. The start of the colonial conquest of new territories coincided with the invention of the art of printing: Columbus reached America in 1492 and Gutenberg had invented the printing press in the 1440s. The art of printing made the written word accessible to wide audiences, and it also meant an explosion in the spread of images on a global level. The discovery of new continents had turned the understanding of the world as it had hitherto existed upside down. So the public was particularly interested in images depicting unknown lands and their exotic inhabitants. The images not only reflected and described the course of conquests and novel territories and their peoples, but also actively participated in conceptualising these and creating stereotypes of the “Other”, thus contributing to the belief in a radical difference between primitive natives and civilised Europeans. An emphasis on We thank: Lisa Reihana, James Pinker, Eidotech, Liina Siib, Estonian History Museum, Estonian National Museum, Pärnu Museum, Tallinn City Museum, Academic Library of cultural differences helped to justify both the conquests Tallinn University, University of Tartu Museum, University of Tartu Library and Valga and the domination of Europeans over native populations. Museum Thus, images of the colonial territories tellingly highlight the close ties of visual culture with power. As Edward Said Collage on the front cover: Lisa Reihana. In Pursuit of Venus [infected]. Detail. 2015. showed in his groundbreaking Orientalism (1978), producing Courtesy of the artist; illustrations from Otto von Kotzebue’s travelogue Entdeckungs- and disseminating knowledge about the colonised “Other” Reise in die Süd-See. Detail. 1821 is inextricably linked with controlling the “Other” and with Published by the Art Museum of Estonia – Kumu Art Museum 2019 expanding the power of colonists. With colonial imagery, the roles of the spectator and the object of the gaze are fixed: the civilised European’s gaze Lisa Reihana’s studies and observes, depicts and categorises the exotic natives who have, actually or potentially, been submitted to European power. From the time the colonies started to gain In Pursuit of Venus independence the postcolonial turn ever more vigorously called for writing and representing the colonial history [infected] from the perspective of colonised peoples. At the centre of the exhibition The Conqueror’s Eye stands Lisa Reihana’s Lisa Reihana’s technically ambitious and the first version of the video work gained powerful video exhibit In Pursuit of Venus, which challenges poetically nuanced work In Pursuit of significant additions, resulting in the final the stereotypes of representing the Self and the Other as Venus (2015–2017, video, 32 min) draws on length of 80 scenes. The work is com- historical evidence, fictional narratives, prised of over 500 individual digital layers they have been established in the tradition of visual culture. mythology and kinship in order to disrupt totalling 33 million pixels per frame. At 25 In a playful reproduction of a scenic wallpaper produced in time, truth, gender and accepted modes frames a second and 32 minutes in length, France in the early 19th century, the gigantic video panorama of representation. In Pursuit of Venus is a that comes to 1,584 trillion pixels. Film was cinematic re-imagining of the neoclassical shot at the Campbelltown Art Centre with explores and de-familiarises images of meetings between French wallpaper Les Sauvages de la mer the Australian Aboriginal community, in civilised Europeans and the barbaric and exotic inhabitants Pacifique (1804–1805). The designer of this London at the Royal Society, and in Auck- of Pacific islands. The work represented New Zealand at the commercially produced wallpaper refer- land. An early decision to commission a enced illustrations made on voyages to the Russian illustrator to hand paint the pared- Venice Biennale in 2017. Pacific by Captain James Cook (1728–1779) back version of the wallpaper’s sky, sea and by the French explorers Jean François and foreground provided the basis for As an extension of Lisa Reihana’s work, the exhibition also de La Pérouse (1741–1788) and Louis Antoine the habitation of Reihana’s orchestration de Bougainville (1729–1811). Two centuries of plants, Pacific peoples, British sailors demonstrates the impact and wide spread of colonialist later, Reihana harnesses digital technolo- and naval ships, and more recently indig- stereotypes in the Baltic region. It highlights the abundance gies to animate, activate and recast the enous peoples from Australia and Nookta of colonial visual culture in Estonian museum collections, original wallpaper, populating her immer- Sound, as well as sea vessels from across sive video panorama with real, invented the Pacific. The work is a conscious perfor- displays illustrations of the travels of Baltic German and speculative narratives of encounters mance of discovery, a becoming witness, a explorers who played a prominent role in the exploration between the peoples of the Pacific and panoramic pantomime, which in its fervour th voyages organised by the Russian empire, and shows visual Europe. Challenging historical and con- echoes early 19 -century Europe’s “pano- temporary stereotypes, the work returns ramania”. The emotional arc of the work is representations of the peoples of the Russian empire, the glare of imperialism with an investiga- powerfully enhanced by its soundscape, including Estonians. tive twist. created by Reihana’s collaborator James Pinker. New inclusions include Aboriginal In Pursuit of Venus represented New Zea- songs, the recording of the ticking of the land at the Venice Biennale in 2017. For this, Royal Society’s hand-wound clock (which once belonged to Captain James Cook) As a result, we do not see the events unfold and recordings of taonga pūoro (Māori from the viewpoint of the explorers land- instruments). ing on the shore; rather, we are watching the action from behind the flora, from the Reihana’s work focuses on key themes of inland perspective. Reihana’s approach to colonialism and colonial visual culture: the decorative and only seemingly scientif- maritime travel and navigation, cultural ically based 19th-century panorama is not encounters and conflicts, Enlightenment nostalgic or openly militant; she does not philosophy and belief in the progress of call for a condemnation of the crimes of science, the close relations between map- the past, but to study the past creatively ping and scientific descriptions of the and critically, to work with it by using irony, world and the global domination of Euro- imagination and local communities. peans, the combining of racism, desire and power in the colonial gaze, longing for Lisa Reihana (1964) is a globally recog- a lost paradise, and the ongoing existence nised artist from New Zealand. She exper- of colonial images, ideas and stereotypes iments across different media, including in the contemporary world. One of the digital video, film, sound, photography, crucial scenes of the video is the death of spatial design, performance, body adorn- James Cook in Hawaii in 1779. While this ment and sculptural form. Reihana’s prac- Jean-Gabriel Charvet (1750–1829) legendary event is of great importance in tice is driven by a deep connection to the The Native Peoples of the Pacific Ocean. Detail 1804–1805. Wallpaper European cultural memory, in Reihana’s communities she works with, which informs Photo: Wikimedia Commons video it is almost hidden in the back- her collaborative working method, which ground. The death of the hero has lost its she describes as kanohi ki te kanohi (face uniqueness and has become a part of a to face). cyclical, ever-repeating story-world, which is very different from the way Cook’s death operated in the narrative of the European colonial conquest and progress of science. The wallpaper The Native Peoples of the Pacific Ocean (Les Sauvages de la mer In addition, in Reihana’s work Captain Pacifique) was a supreme achievement of the printing technology of the day. It Cook has acquired an ambivalent gender consisted of 20 panels and 1,000 wood cuts and adorned many a fine dining hall identity. Highlighting the presence of the and salon both in Europe and in North America. Typical of the Neoclassical era, past, the video stresses the need to work the characters are wearing costumes reminiscent of classical antiquity that were with colonial legacy and to reclaim it from high fashion in late-18th-century Europe. The vegetation depicted in the wallpaper Māori and Pacific perspectives. Instead of partly derives from the botanical illustrations published in the accounts of Cap- being the objects of the observing gaze, tain James Cook’s travels through the Pacific; partly, however, it is composed of the native people have taken control of the South American plants that Charvet had seen on his recent visit to the continent. camera. The visual heritage of Cook’s expeditions is considered the most ambitious in the tradition of geographical discovery: his travels resulted in 600 watercolours, gouaches and paintings, 180 engravings, and 2,000 natural historical drawings and engravings. The Colonial World in Estonian Collections A considerable amount of pictorial mate- items of classical antiquity. Thus the pic- rial concerning geographical discoveries torial notes on a continuously expanding reached Estonia in the Age of Enlighten- and more charted world reached Baltic ment, in the late 18th century and in the intellectuals: these concerned new geo- first half of the 19th century. The Century graphical discoveries, natural wonders, of Enlightenment brought about a revo- architectural heritage and ethnic and eth- lution in reading, but also a revolution in nographic wealth.