1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

traditional or contemporary modes, is contemporary art—the exhibition touring America at present illustrates this point to perfection. So that when we read that the Triennial “is attempting to exhibit the most dynamic art of the region rather than traditional art”, the statement is problematic for us: that distinction seems arbitrary and artificial. The “search for cultural identity in the face of internationalism in art”, as the Triennial flyer puts is, requires Maori to face the past, our ancestors and such of our traditions as have survived, and to reconcile our present with them. You might think that in a country where two cultures, that of the ethnocentric colonised and that of the Eurocentric colonisers, had co­ existed for more than a century-and-a-half, for the most part amicably, and in a unique relationship found nowhere else in the world, our differing perspectives would be mutually well understood. Certainly, we have biculturalism as an ideal. In practice, however, biculturalism is optional and voluntary for the power culture but compulsory for the indigenoiis Other. The potential for misunderstanding on one side of this unequal relationship is therefore considerable. In this respect, no recent New Zealand artwriting has provoked more bitterness than Rangihiroa Panoho’s essay, ‘Maori: At the Centre, On the Margins’, in the Headlands catalogue. At the very least, it seemed like bad form, like letting the side down, to pillory, in a prestigious art institution in a rival country, one of New Zealand’s most revered artists, Gordon Walters. Even M ao ri^^p ro fessionabr-sueh-as-^ffYVTuirng and ft 6 M tw * ^ Gary-NioheknrrrfrTe Waka Toi, appear to have disowned Panoho. Ralph Hotere, the first Maori to be written into the histories of New Zealand painting, is reported to be “particularly dismayed with Rangi Panoho’s