The Fourth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

WHEN YOU RETURN ... Puloto, nurtured from an oceanic perspective is a name generally applied to terrestrial variation of plateaus. Oxygen in these open situations is very similar to shapes extracting form that shows no signs of becoming adventurous. A man dreams he is jailed in the ground. On closer inspection the leaves I dismissed earlier as binding material were really the ti mata a/ea. Leaves that sheltered without hesitation a long history of urban settlement were seen as a culinary cuisine and now replaced with aluminium. I came across superimposed organisms extending my breathe towards the word flesh, reminding me how little space I have, now that the decolonisation process had been terminated at the last ladder to Pu!oto. I searched for seed as a gift. Unfortunately, the only reproductive material obtainable consisted of a few fallen decayed fruits. I climbed anyway and was disappointed on the last cloud . I did not offer assistance as I could see my own people in the same predicament. What I did give though, because in my heart it is highly valued for construction purposes, was oxygen. Since my arrival, large freely branching panicles became more intertwined, a messy entanglement, particularly obtuse at the apex, wrapping themselves around the clouds below, wrapping as a milder generic form of genocide, concealed in loans, segregated in education and jobs; excluding the lei, as the lei resists perturbed visitors, possibly due to the presence of contempt. Empty of physical ingenuity, a man hurried past, a chair on his shoulders. I followed. Small carnivorous animals in the past have disturbed the theatrical nuances. Less dense, undoubtedly indigenous, nine men struggled with logs; above their heads small birds circled. Long established secondary icons presented a smaller group, birds also suspended above each head haloed like spiritual domes. Thinly membranous, the spirit of this soil worried me. There are no visitor resistant properties left. Below me chunks of coral fissures and vegetation. Under favourable conditions I could make it to the ladder. A partially cleared area of inland forests had been cleared for state housing. Endless levels of Polynesian communities exist in populated suburbs such as Mangere, Porirua, Otara, Avondale and Grey Lynn. I failed to detect fragrances on the urban pathways that sprang up from the words, the type secreted when alliances expire. I went on, passed the hospital that had virtually acquired the status of an adventive. The story of my grandfather immersing his fingers into the dark soil of Aotearoa, replanting shoots of taro, seeds of corn, strengthens the ground. As he tilled the two soils together these plants showed no slight morphological difference in depth or of minerals clashing, both gelled and suffused acts of stability, colour, acceptance and permanence. By planting he cultivated a piece of my country to live on. Installing roots and seeds to germinate on words that offer a platform to speak from, to stand on. When you return lift your shadow up from the ground, carry it as if it was your pita, sit down with it by the window, enjoy the day. Where rain falls the most, wash the capillaries first for these are gentle reminders you once was just a dream, you too, once clung to the sea as your mother's voice helped create your ears. If the nights happen to confuse you don't be afraid those were your first breath. If you should see the sun on your first travel outside the womb, consider yourself lucky that those rays of hope would one day, at the end of your life, be a sanctuary at your birth. John Puhiatau Pule is a Niue poet and painter.This essay was written when I was the Distinguished-Visiting Writer to the Department of English at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Spring semester 2002. Denise Tiavouane New Caledonia b.1962 Les Taros qui pleurent (The crying taros) 1996 Installation comprising taro plants, bamboo, wooden sticks, audio components The Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery Sources Epeli Hau'ofa, 'Our sea of islands', A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, eds E. Waddell, V. Naidu & E. Hau'ofa, University of the South Pacific, in association with Beake House, Suva, 1993, pp.2-16. Albert Refiti, Boneflute ivi ivi [catalogue]. Performed at the MaidmentTheatre, Auckland University, Auckland, 2000. Thomas Ryan, Narratives of Encounters on Niue, University of Waikato, Waikato, 1996. Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1991. Albert Wendt, Inside Us the Dead: Poems 1961-1974, Longman Paul, Auckland, 1976. Glossary Ao Fanau Hiapo Kia ora Lo'omatua Malama Manatu Pita Po Pu/oto Rangitoto Tangata whenua Tapa Ti mata a/ea Tufuga Wairua day be born Niuean tapa cloth greeting female elder light to think, memory the umbilical, usually referred to as the house where the child spends the first nine months of his/her life night underworld Te Rangi i Toto Ai Te lhu Tamatekapua (translation: the bleeding nose of Tamatekapua) people of the land cloth made from the mulberry tree Cordyline tree. According to mythology, the tree from where the first people of Niue originated craftsman, expert, specialist spirit, soul 35