The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

What money can’t buy: Relationships of value in the Pacific We live in a time characterised by the constant movement of ‘currencies, capital, labour, images, ideas and human beings’. 1 In APT9, a number of artists and groups from the Pacific, including Aotearoa New Zealand, navigate these circumstances by responding to ideas of wealth and value. Together, their artworks demonstrate the ways in which indigenous artists, curators and communities in the Pacific use contemporary art to assert the value of their own relationship-based systems of knowledge and exchange, self-consciously incorporating, accommodating and resisting the values of a global economy. From Aotearoa New Zealand, for example, Lisa Reihana revisions how late eighteenth-century Pacific peoples sought to create relational spaces of exchange and reciprocity with European voyagers. In the more than 65 vignettes of colonial encounters comprising her immersive audiovisual installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] 2015–17, British voyagers — including Captain James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks — are presented with prestigious gifts, including barkcloth, tattoos, and even potential brides. These gestures mark the creation and consecration of relational ties within the indigenous traditions represented. 2 Dynamically rendered with surround sound, the work is an active space, woven through with contemporary articulations of the region’s rich performance traditions. Reihana’s incorporation of footage of live performance artists into this historic narrative highlights the enduring significance of collaboration in Pacific societies, as well as how the ongoing practice of performance and ceremonial traditions articulates the genealogical ties that bind the living with the ancestral through time and space. 3 Kanaka Māoli photographer Kapulani Landgraf engages with both the contemporary and the ancestral landscapes of her homeland of Hawai‘i. Working with collage, Landgraf literally shreds images of sites given over to development, tourism and militarism, and meticulously reconfigures this terrain to reference traditional legend and knowledge systems, the foundation of which is a belief in an interdependent relationship between humans (including the cosmological and the ancestral) and the natural environment. Equally concerned with indigenous perspectives that prioritise relationships of custodianship and shared knowledge over commodity value, Areta Wilkinson’s work is informed by Māori belief in the relationship involving tāonga (treasured possessions), the land, and the people (living and ancestral) connected to them. Drawing on generational art-making processes, Wilkinson creates works that reference historical methods of creating body adornment, providing new opportunities for cherishing these objects, their traditions, stories and relational ties. Conversations with Marshallese spoken-word artist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner evolved into a project celebrating the contemporary weaving of jaki-ed mats, once worn as clothing in the Marshall Islands. Following the recent revival of the art form, jaki-ed weaving is understood as an important site in which cultural knowledge is revived and livelihoods sustained. Jetñil-Kijiner highlights the weaving circle as an important social space in which women from outlying atolls gather to build understanding, networks and support structures that enable them to navigate issues arising from the global forces of capitalism, threats posed by climate change, and a history of militarism and nuclear testing. Alternative ideas of wealth and value are directly addressed through the awe-inspiring display of large rings of Diwarra or Tabu (shell money) by the Gunantuna (Tolai) peoples of East New Britain in Papua New Guinea. Diwarra is a thriving indigenous currency used as legal tender in everyday transactions in East New Britain, alongside Papua New Guinea’s national currency (kina). 4 Diwarra possesses value for the Gunantuna through its use in important rites of passage, where it articulates, creates and regulates relationships and affirms spiritual beliefs. The accumulation of shell money highlights the hard work of maintaining relational ties within and beyond one’s clan lineage. The collection of a huge volume of Diwarra necessary for a display of the majestic Loloi and Tutana rings represents the sophistication of an individual or clan's social connections and merit. 5 For APT9, lead artist Gideon Kakabin worked within his culture and its protocols to ensure that relational identities were maintained and collective regeneration was achieved.