The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

SOPOLEMALAMA FILIPE TOHI Tonga/New Zealand b.1959 Fakalava (from Maquettes 2003–12) Balsa wood, PVA glue / 22 x 22 x 10cm (approx., each) Left to right: Pulefakalava 2006, Pulekafa 2003–12, Kulasi 2003–12 Examples of lashing using kafa (sennit); 32–43cm (h) / Images courtesy: The artist / Photographs: Sam Hartnett I have been seeking to work with Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi for more than a decade. Our conversations have mostly taken place at the Pacific Arts Festivals, firstly in Palau in 2004 and lastly in American Samoa in 2011. There, among the rhythmic, ordered performances, alongside the tap-tapping of the tatau and the eloquent oration, Tohi’s multi-faceted practice sings. Harking back to almost forgotten traditions like lalava , he mines an oral history that is rich in allegory and mathematical precision. Lalava is the lashing of sennit: hand- rolled cordage made from coconut husks and dyed to different shades of earth-colour. It is an art form that has created some of the most intricate and beautiful patterns in the Pacific. Before the introduction of nails to this region, all buildings, sea-faring vessels and tools were also bound with sennit, enabling extraordinary naval journeys and the construction of magnificent structures. Tohi is a tufunga lalava , a regionally recognised master of lalava . He has a story to tell, and our conversations about the selection of work for the Triennial have been marked by a contagious fervour to communicate the most important elements of this complex aesthetic and philosophical practice. Here is his account. 1 The Pacific had no writing. No texts to talk about the beginning of creation or to transmit particular knowledge. Pattern was, and continues to be, the language. And every pattern in the Pacific can be linked back to lalava . The stories of the past, of the ancestors, and of particular genealogies are all inferred using the patterns and symbols contained within the thousands of different lashing possibilities. The black dot in a void is the very beginning. 2 It is how lashing starts. It is also like a faraway star in the night sky or the earliest form of an embryo. The sennit itself, which binds and contains, is likened to the umbilical cord, the giver of life and sustenance. String is the key to understanding the ubiquity of hierarchy in Tongan society and history. It is wrapped around the body at death (over barkcloth) and during important life-cycle events. Likewise, the ta’ovala , an intricate string waist mat, denotes social rank and by so doing links the wearer to their genealogy. The creation of patterns for ngatu (Tongan barkcloth) also arose from lalava . Every ngatu has lines derived from sennit to signal the commencement of that work’s particular narrative. The beautiful, porous surface is often divided into black squares, with added elements painted within them that echo the layering of the sennit into lalava . There is a vibrant transposition of symbols across different art forms, with lalava , ngatu and tatau sharing, among other things, the square, the black dot, the intermittent line and space and the ‘V’ shape, the cross and the ‘chequerboard’. These have variously been interpreted as beings or things from people’s immediate environment, like particular birds or star configurations such as the Southern Cross. The cross, fakalava in Tongan, is a recurring symbol across the different mediums used to explore lalava in APT7. It can be seen in the wool lashings, from which the drawings are then derived. Each drawing represents a layer of the lalava , a layer of lashing. The cross pattern is also re-created as a maquette where the balsawood pieces are used like string, criss-crossing each other to build a form. The two large custom wood sculptures are examples of lalava observed from different angles — one from a 45-degree angle and the other carved at a 60-degree angle, emulating the slant used to construct lalava . The reading of this abstraction is enabled through the repetition of patterns throughout time. Micronesian navigation charts, which were composed of sticks bound and interspersed with cowrie shells to chart oceans and swells, were not taken on voyages but functioned as mnemonic devices, triggering knowledge. For Tohi, lalava acts in the same manner: I have identified a visual language within the lalava that was not only used by our ancestors for voyaging, but it communicated principles of cultural knowledge and history. For me the sennit patterns of the Pacific convey our memories and experiences as well as carrying us from place to place. 3 Maud Page 1 This text was developed in conversation with the artist, June 2012. 2 This is illustrated in one of Tohi’s drawings for APT7. 3 Karen Stevenson, ‘Filipe Tohi, Journey to the Future — Makahoko mei Lotokafa’, unpublished manuscript, 2012, ch.3, p.5. The title of this text ‘making the invisible visible’ is an idea explored throughout Stevenson’s text. SOPOLEMALAMA FILIPE TOHI Making the invisible visible 210