Kanakart more

Taking new pride

Gilbert Bladinières
Co-curator, Kanakart

“If Kanaké’s ancestors were to return in the year 2000, they would recognize the man from his name. They would recognize his hierarchical system, his genealogies, his customary structure, his language even though impoverished, his humour – in a word, his way of living in the world as it has persisted throughout history.”
Jean-Marie Tjibaou, 1976*

Art is a language that reminds men and women of their community’s essential values. The ancestor figure who inhabits most traditional Kanak pieces reveals the place of the ‘eldest brother’ in Kanak mysticism: he whose oratory and action founded the lineage and who chose the mound for the Great House; he who, from the world beyond, watches over the destiny of his descendants; he who guides the artist’s hand through dreaming.

His face sculpted in fine timber restates his perpetual spirit: he hears, he sees, he speaks and he is present in the monumental sculptures of the traditional house, as he is in the carefully crafted valuables used in ceremonial exchanges.

Through the ages, the significance of these items has always exceeded their aesthetic value – they are the medium conveying the spoken words. They are the memory of a civilisation. This heritage, denied for so long by colonisation, destroyed by the missionaries or dispersed all over the world for the benefit of informed art lovers, has now achieved full recognition. In recent decades, after a long period of inactivity, the artists have taken up their tools again.

In 1975, the first Kanak cultural festival – ‘Melanesia 2000’ – started this revival. Initiated by Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the event brought together 2000 participants and attracted some 50,000 spectators. The dawning awareness it brought would be a catalyst for many artists.

Following in their forefathers’ footsteps, the sculptors revisited their cultural codes and some turned to highly contemporary forms of expression.As this was happening, the women moved in a similar direction, adopting painting, engraved bamboo designs and petroglyph motifs. In this transgression, they were imitated by the younger generation today exploring sculpture, previously a male preserve.

Work done by the various Kanak cultural agencies since the 1980s has been instrumental in this revival. Like De Jade et de Nacre (Of Jade and Mother-of-Pearl), which brought home some major pieces of traditional art, the first Ko I Nevâ, L’Esprit du pays (the Spirit of the Country) exhibition, in 1990, offered a remarkably broad insight into contemporary Kanak creativity. Others would follow, accompanying the opening of the Tjibaou Cultural Centre in 1998 and its work of imparting energy to cultural processes. Kanak visual artists numbered about 50 in 1986, 110 in 1990 and are almost 300 strong today.

In mixing leading exhibits from the Museum of New Caledonia with contemporary art works from the Tjibaou Cultural Centre, this exhibition aims to show how this renewed vitality is being expressed. Today, as yesterday, Kanak art constantly evokes the body of the ancestor. This body-metaphor incarnates the features of a People relating constantly to its history, space and destiny.

As the great identity and existence issues are universal, you will be able to identify with these pieces, which speak about us all, beings of flesh and blood, driven by a strong wish to share.

*In Kanaké,The Melanesian Way, Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Philippe Misotte, 1976, éditions du Pacifique, Hachette.