The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

189 Robin White, Leba Toki and Bale Jione A shared garden Fijian masi (barkcloth) artist Leba Toki and New Zealand artist– printmaker Robin White began their collaborative relationship in 2000. Drawing on a shared Bahá’í faith, with its precepts of harmonious cultural interaction, their extraordinary works involve an extensive process of community consultation and knowledge sharing to manifest their rich layers of imagery and meaning. 1 A combination of Bahá’í concepts, Indian motifs and traditional Fijian patterns, as well as explorations of social practices common to different cultures, are primary features of their collaborative works. Begun in Leba Toki’s home in Lautoka in December 2008, Teitei vou (A new garden) 2009 is Toki and White’s second collaborative project. Involving an additional masi artist, Bale Jione, and consultation with Indo-Fijian neighbours, the work acknowledges the complex histories of cultural interaction resulting from the creation of a modern ‘sugar’ economy in Fiji. The sugar industry developed when the Australian CSR company imported indentured Indian labourers between 1879 and 1919. The Indian community’s subsequent growth, its relative economic success and access to land have proven complex and divisive issues for Fiji, culminating in recent decades in a series of military-led coups to reclaim power and land for indigenous Fijians. 2 Known locally as ‘sugar city’, Lautoka boasts the largest of Fiji’s four sugar mills and its population is a complex mix of different cultures. Consisting of six masi , one ibe vakabati (wool-fringed pandanus mat) and two fabric mats, Teitei vou (A new garden) adopts the format in which masi is displayed within a traditional Fijian wedding. 3 The artists describe this as ‘representing a marriage of cultures and an acknowledgement of the bounties and gifts that come from such a union’. 4 For wedding ceremonies, masi fashioned into sulu (sarongs) and oro (cummerbunds), often saturated with pigment to achieve a symbolically powerful golden or brown hue, are worn by both bride and groom, despite past injunctions against women wearing them. 5 As part of the butu (female gift exchange ceremony), the couple stand on a pile of mats and masi layered by family members to form the bridal bed. These layers are arranged according to their level of importance; the ritual wool-fringed ibe vakabati sits just below the uppermost butubutu (ritual masi ), believed to sanctify both the bed and the union. In Teitei vou (A new garden) , a pair of fabric mats created from pieces of masi , combined with fragments of wedding saris, is placed on top, suggesting an Indian–Fijian union. The large and richly stencilled taunamu ( masi screen) forms a backdrop for the bride and groom as they face family members. Ideas of love and unity, achieved through the sharing of food often sweetened with sugar, inspired the work; sugarcane is juxtaposed with a pattern from the indigenous kumala on the butubutu . The title Teitei vou , however, is derived from the writings of Bahá’ulláh — the founder of the artists’ shared Bahá’í faith — and proclaims in symbolic language the appearance of a new garden in which those who strive can discover the mysteries of love. 6 The importance of Bahá’í in the overall conception of the work is also evident in the imagery on the large taunamu which references the distinctive terraced gardens and the Shrine of the Bab on Mount Carmel, in Haifa, Israel. Metaphors for growth and change are suggested in the work’s title; gardens are regularly altered through cross-fertilisation and the migration of different plant species. Bringing together motifs representing Fijian, Indian and Middle Eastern flora and cultural history in their ‘new garden’, the artists invite considerations of an organic system dependent on diversity. This contrasts with references to the House of the Bab in Shiraz, Iran (a Bahá’í place of pilgrimage that was attacked during the Iranian revolution, and later completely destroyed), as well as ominous snake and jackal motifs. 7 The less sustainable reality of monoculture sugarcane plantations and the continued indenture of underpaid Indian workers to service multinational industries are also suggested by the coupling of sugarcane and Vodafone logo motifs in the work. However, the complexities of these divergent cultural histories are not represented here as unresolvable confrontations: Teitei vou (A new garden) instead explores their intimate combination. Leba Toki, Bale Jione and Robin White worked together, and with their communities, not only to layer woven pandanus, fabric mats and barkcloths to sanctify a union based on the peaceful precepts of the Bahá’í faith, but also to celebrate the fruitfulness of diversity. Ruth McDougall Endnotes 1 Founded in the mid nineteenth century in Iran by Bahá’ulláh, Bahá’í preaches the spiritual unity of mankind and espouses a vision of world peace. 2 Fiji has had four coups since 1987. See Craig Sherborne, ‘Coup-coup land’, in The Monthly , October 2008, pp.44–8. 3 Only a selection of textiles from Teitei vou will be on display in APT6, including the Taunamu , Butubutu , Ibe vakabati and two fabric mats. 4 Robin White, email to Maud Page, Queensland Art Gallery, January 2009. 5 See Rod Ewin’s discussion of masi as male ‘badge of virility’ in Rod Ewin, Staying Fijian: Vatulele Island Barkcloth and Social Identity , Crawford House Publishing, Adelaide and University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 2009. 6 Bahá’ulláh, The Hidden Words , Bahá’í Publishing Committee, New York, c.1932. 7 The House of the Bab was demolished in September 1979 and in 1981 the site was made into a road and public square.