The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

180 Vanuatu Sculptors Innovation and tradition Spectacular Ambrym sculptures and drums, carved from the trunks of black palm and breadfruit trees, are internationally recognised as emblems of traditional ni-Vanuatu culture. Studied and collected by anthropological museums all over the world, today these towering forms — along with the intensely powerful temar ne ari (ancestor spirit) sculptures and the ‘guardian of tabou house’ figures — are created in reaffirmation of kastom (customary government, law and religion) on the island of Ambrym. This strengthening has been accelerated by the objects’ transformation to ‘art’, by the growing economic needs of the artists, and by the success of Ambrym as a tourist destination exhibiting ‘traditional’ culture. With their presentation in APT6, we see the first appearance of a major group of works coming from customary practice in this contemporary international art exhibition. Strongly tied to male kastom , the powerful works carved by artists such as Freddy Bule and Michel Rangie are also part of the historical process of artistic creation and renewal lying at the heart of Ambrymese life and tradition. 1 Some of the ceremonies involving carved objects which are practised on Ambrym today are secular, and have been adopted and adapted from neighbouring islands as part of a centuries-old process of cultural exchange. While maintaining a strong link to place and kastom , the Ambrymese enthusiastically translated other cultural practices where they saw the advantage of supplementing their own. One of the most significant of these is the purchase, from the neighbouring island of Malakula, of the rituals of status acquisition known as mague , represented in APT6 by painted and carved ‘Mague (ranking black palm)’ figures. Mague is a hierarchical series of initiations through which men are able to achieve higher levels of status and authority within the community. While mague rites have always been practised on Ambrym, this indigenous kin-based system — ‘which acted as the creative basis for cosmological ideas’ 2 , as well as indicating social status — has been augmented by a more hierarchical system from Malakula over the past three or four centuries. The introduction of a Christian missionary settlement, and the destabilising effects of competing French and British political interests within local Ambrymese politics in the first half of the twentieth century, however, resulted in a decline in the practice of mague and particularly its indigenous forms, berang yayan and fenbi . Writing in 1914, ethnologist WHR Rivers (1864–1922) proposed that the Ambrymese use of abstract design was a way of symbolically engaging with others at the same time as concealing secret knowledge. 3 The increasing visual presence of the Malakulan system in North Ambrym since the 1940s may be an extension of this impulse. Anthropologists continued to arrive in the area from this time, and North Ambrymese men increasingly had to compete for power with colonists and with Ambrymese men who had embraced Christianity and/or had familial ties with western Ambrym and Malakula. Regardless, today the imported Malakulan system, which involves the use of pigs and other valuables to acquire rank, has largely replaced the indigenous mague rites and their associated ritual objects. More secular and, many believe, more democratic in nature, these imported rites have resulted in important and sometimes contentious shifts in local power, as well as developments in mague art. The most important of these is the Ambrymese adoption and adaptation of a Malakulan copyright system (associated with monumental Malakulan ranking black palm sculptures) to objects used in imported mague and other ceremonies. As anthropologist Kirk Huffman has noted, in the Malakulan copyright system, everything — from a whole ritual to individual objects to the designs used on objects — can be purchased or sold. Once an individual has purchased the rights to copyright, they then have the authority to resell. As a result, objects, ceremonies and designs from one area are able to combine with those from another. This shows that transformation and change is the norm, not the exception: . . . the rituals themselves were, and are, thought to have a power and spirit of their own that urges them to get up, move to other areas, to stay there for a while, and then move on. 4 The skill and creativity of Ambrymese sculptors, such as Bule, Rangie, Kilfan, Marakon and the Mansak family, are manifested in the way they have creatively adapted the squat face and cropped head of ranking black palm figures from the Malakulan rites into the distinctive Ambrymese style. The Mague (ranking black palm) figures and Atingting (slit drum) demonstrate this with their deeply carved eyes and brows, their elongated faces and mesmerising, disc-shaped eyes. With atingting , the three rows of toothing represent hair around each figure’s face, and with the mague , the inclusion of carved and painted fauna is also a common feature of the sculptures, created by contemporary Ambrymese artists who have the necessary copyright. The continuing importance of the copyright system to objects made for many Ambrymese rituals, including those deemed secret, is also evident in restrictions on the use of new materials and techniques. Artists must purchase and pass through the various levels of initiation in order to gain the right to carve and decorate art works that signify different rankings, or in the case of temar ne ari and ‘guardian of tabou house’ figures, particular ancestors. Men who have achieved the highest rankings administer local adherence to the copyright