Thursday, February 17, 2011

Art for art's sake?

Art. No matter the medium, its origin lies in the soul of the artist, therefore it touches the souls of all who read/see/hear/touch it. 

Last week, in seminar, a question was posed which has been circling and weaving itself in and out of, and generally scratching at my psyche.  The question (and I paraphrase here) was:  Can we look at art without seeing the underpinnings of politics?  In other words, what political statement is the artist making?

There are instances, I believe, when the artist actually plans to make a statement and knows exactly what that statement is/will be.  The majority of the time, however (and I say this as an artist who works in a number of different mediums) the statement is only recognized/realized after the work is completed.  Also, as we are all positioned differently, the interpretation of that statement will be unique to each individual who views/reads/hears/touches that particular work.  This becomes most evident when the person evaluating the piece has no point of reference.  Take Michel Tuffery’s numerous mechanical povi.  If one has no understanding of the introduction of a cash economy and Western foods to Oceanic peoples, will he or she see the diseases Pacific Islanders have now become “pre-disposed” to?  Will they see/feel the dis-ease of the Pacific Islander within the status quo? 

Point of reference.  Let’s take a moment and rewind.  In Samoan, corned beef is called fasi povi masima (fasi=piece, povi=cow/ beef, masima=salt).  However, canned corned beef (apa=can, tu’u apa=canned, povi=beef/cow), is called Pisupo.  Why?  One story is that missionaries brought with them canned pea soup. The Samoan language had no word for Pea Soup and so they “Samoanized” it, thus Pea Soup became Pisupo.  Not long after, any canned food was referred to as Pisupo, and eventually Pisupo became the word understood as “canned corned beef.”

Fast forward and broaden the spectrum.  The introduction of a cash economy coupled with the convenience of imported, prepackaged Western foods supplanted traditional diets.  This scenario is problematic throughout Oceania and the Pacific Islander has now become “pre-disposed” to obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, and all manner of soft tissue infections (not the least of which is CA-MRSA…which loosely translates from “medicalese” to English as "antibiotic resistant staph infection").   These pre-packaged, convenient foods (along with the cash economy and...well...colonization, in general) have pulled the Islander away from the land and sea, adding more distance between the Islander and an already strained relationship with/to his/her “traditional” culture.  When the circle becomes weakened in one area, it becomes pre-disposed to be weakened in others. 

So…to someone with a point of reference, Tuffery’s povi/cow, constructed only of Pisupo cans might say, “look what the constructs  of colonialism, capitalism, and the building democratic nation states has done/is doing to Pacific Islanders.”  On the other hand, to someone with no knowledge of colonialism, the response to this same work might be, “Oh!  How creative…a bull made out of corned beef cans!”

Much of the work I’ve chosen to display in this entry was taken from this site http://www.oceaniartset.com/Ocean-Arts-Set/Home_IDL=2_IDT=848_ID=3659_.html  which is an offshoot of Epeli Ha’olfa’s Centre for Arts and Culture at Fiji’s University of the South Pacific.  Just as Ha’ofa’s concept of a Sea of Islands whereby the ocean, is transformed into a super highway which connects Oceania’s myriad of cultures one to another, so does the Centre’s Red Wave use the ocean as a metaphorical vehicle to unite rather than separate.  The art mediums are as varied as the peoples of the Pacific and like Wendt’s concept of the only true culture as being the one in which we are living, these artists call upon not only their own life experiences, but the traditional stories of the past.  The “old Gods” never died, they have merely been waiting for the time when they would be called forth again.  Each story/dance/song/poem/picture awakens the past so that it can be reborn to a new incarnation in the present.  Art is/has its own language and like all languages and cultures it is alive and ever changing/evolving.

Art.  A double edged sword – it cuts both ways.  Coming from the soul and speaking to the soul, art has the ability to exhibit both our commonalities and our differences, thus revealing the beauty of diversity.  While it has the potential to be the tool which excises a malignancy commonly known as “colonization of the mind,” art also (when perverted, manipulated, and spun) can be used to accomplish just the opposite. 



I (literally) stumbled across this article while searching for images to place in this Blog entry: The Red Wave Collective: The Process of Creating Art at the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture by Katherine Higgins is in the Contemporary Pacific Journal (Vol. 21, Number 1, Spring 2009, pp35-50) and is well worth the read.

3 comments:

  1. Enjoyed reading this entry and the connection you make to the marvellous artistic work done at the Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies...thanks to the vision of the late Hau'ofa. Thanks for highlighting the amazing work of art done at the Red Wave Collective. This blog should be read by others with interests in the Pacific arts, culture, and literature.

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  2. Thanks for this great posting... also for including the link to the redwave collective. I had never seen that web page, but have read the Higgins article. She also made a film as a component of her Thesis written on the Red Wave collective, which I would be very interested in seeing.
    In the case of Tuffery's work, I think powerful messages are communicated through cultural signs and symbols that arent necessarily reliant on historical context. I think his work would provoke questions regardless of viewers previous knowledge, such as "Why is a bull made of corn beef cans? What is the relationship with colonialism?" The culture of pre-packaged food is not an unfamiliar story to many and with a bit of deductive thinking, I think Tuffery's work speaks to masses familiar to globalization, while staying rooted in local and nuanced history. Also reasons, why its a powerful artwork...

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  3. Tuffery said that the reason he initially used corned beef cans was because that was the material he had to work with...and the bull was what he decided to make out of it.

    Thanks so much for posting, Marion.

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