The Sixth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

32 Rites and rights: Contemporary Pacific Maud Page Leba Toki recently planted taro in the lush, terraced gardens of the Shrine of the Bab in Haifa, Israel, a place of worship dedicated to Bahá’ulláh, the Persian founder of the Bahá’Í faith that she follows. The experience of adding something from her own Fijian soil to a place already imbued with so many symbols of unity and understanding provided the genesis for the work Teitei vou (A new garden) 2009, produced in collaboration with New Zealand artist Robin White and renowned masi (Fijian barkcloth) artist Bale Jione. But this is a mistranslation of Leba’s account — formulating only a literal reading of the trio’s complex and poetic artistic process. Rather, every time the three artists added another motif to their four-metre barkcloth they saw it as planting — pushing the ink through the fibrous layers of masi with their fingertips, the remnants of the ink remaining, like earth underneath fingernails. Taro was one of the first things they ‘planted’ in their garden, followed by sugarcane, pineapples and orange trees. 1 Exhibiting art works that are still functional objects or that are derived from customary practices, such as Teitei vou (A new garden) , opens a number of dialogues that the Asia Pacific Triennials have been exploring for some time. These conversations are both rewarding, in that they broaden interpretive possibilities, and fraught, as they highlight the disjunctures and mistranslations of our comfort zone. Curator Okwui Enwezor, however, warns against the romantic idea that there will always be a ‘misunderstanding when you take on the work of other cultures. These do happen, but those misunderstandings can never be addressed unless you make an attempt’. 2 The APT is the only series of exhibitions to systematically engage with the art of the Pacific region and interject it within that of a very prolific Asia. This is a discursive act. This APT presents eight artists/collectives from the Pacific, including New Zealand. It has a particular interest in the cultural expressions of Vanuatu, showing customary sculptures from North Ambrym alongside prints made by a group of young Port Vila-based artists, as well as the music of the region in Pacific Reggae: Roots Beyond the Reef. These three examples provide an insight into ni-Vanuatuans’ engagement with modernity and history. In varying degrees, all draw on customary practices, with artists continuing to use selected customary elements or altering them to suit present needs and ideas. Teitei vou (A new garden) also addresses these concerns by using barkcloth and the traditional rites of Fijian marriage as a starting point. This installation explores the narratives relating to the artists’ shared Bahá’Í faith, Toki and Jione’s Fijian material culture, and the difficulties of living in a politically turbulent Fiji. The large Lautoka sugar mill dominating this town’s landscape is repeated as a pattern on the taunamu ( masi screen), for example, recalling over 100 years of indentured Indian labour. Alongside these depictions, which include the symbols of major world religions together with jackals and crows, are also patterns specific to the Moce area from where Toki and Jione originate. In Teitei vou (A new garden) , the artists have assembled and