A Conversation with Co-Curators Lawrence Rinder and Lafcadio Cortesi
Q. This is an out-of-the-ordinary kind of exhibition, how did you come up with the idea?
LR: Well, Lafcadio and I had been talking for years about the potential for linking the preservation of tribal arts with environmental conservation--initially about Indonesian textiles. So we were already curious about the possibility of doing something on this issue. We particularly liked the idea of doing a project that would develop markets for the highest end forms of these arts. It seemed to us that there were existing markets for the craft level on the one hand, and antiquities on the other, but no really existing market for contemporary production of the highest quality.
LC: Can I jump in there? This was after I had come back from Indonesia. I had spent a lot of time there talking with and learning from weavers. Through that process we saw that they had a need both to generate income, but also had a desire not to lose their traditions. They also wanted to generate income in ways that would strengthen their communities and do community development. So I had often entered into discussions with them about these issues, and I'd come back and tell Larry. And he was in the museum, so another thing we'd talk about was how can a museum take a more active and proactive role in society? Would this sort of melding be an opportunity to do that?
LR: So then, Lafcadio's main territory shifted at some point from Indonesia to Papua New Guinea, so instead of coming back with Indonesian textiles, he started coming back with Papua New Guinea carvings, and then Papua New Guinea tapa cloths. The foremost Papua New Guinea tapa cloth is made in a village named Uiaku, one of the main villages of the Maisin people. I guess initially, he'd bought some tapa cloth in Port Moresby, the capitol, and didn't know much about where it came from, or what it was. Then, on one of his trips, he went to Uiaku to find out.
LC: Exactly, and Nick Bowness of Petroglyph Productions came with me. He brought his camera and we did some filming on how tapa cloth was made and interviewed people on what it meant to them. I was really struck, because it is a tribal art and yet it's so contemporary. Every design is different. In weaving there's sort of a template that weavers usually follow, one that has been passed down from generation to generation, and there's expression but within that framework. Here the framework is the kind of cloth it's painted on and the colors they use, but aside from that, the imagination is the limit.
LR: So Lafcadio brought back some cloths from one of these trips, and Nick Bowness also brought some back and showed them to me and I thought they looked terrific. As you know, I'd been thinking about the possibilities for expanding the parameters of our contemporary art exhibition program here at the museum to include a broader cultural and global representation. We did one exhibition like that a few years ago, Herminia Albarran Romero's Dia de los Muertos altar. The problem with expanding a program in this way, is that I have no training in things other than contemporary Western art. When you take the opportunity and the risk to go beyond what you know, then you have to devote more energy and attention to it than you might ordinarily. So rather than just throwing open the museum to any possibility for contemporary global culture, it's been my conviction that the way for us to go is to take one or two opportunities and really focus on them.
So we decided that tapa cloth art was an ideal choice to do an exhibition of a non-Western contemporary art form. In part because the work looked really interesting and beautiful, and I thought that we'd have an interested audience. Also because of its relationship to abstraction in the West, both the similarities and the differences The other issues that have come up since then, and the reasons for our collaboration with Greenpeace, really developed after that initial interest with the work as a visual art form. We knew that this would be a chance to link the presentation of this work as an art form with information about the social, cultural, and ecological context in which this work is made. The exhibition would also be an opportunity for active engagement between the United States and the Maisin in Papua New Guinea and a vehicle for change for the people in Papua New Guinea. In developing the exhibition in collaboration with the Maisin people, part of the challenge has been to make it, to the greatest extent possible, serve their needs as well as ours.
LC: I'll just jump in there because, just as with the art side, where a lot of factors made the exhibition of tapa cloths right in a contemporary art context, from an ecological perspective, the people of Collingwood Bay, particularly the Maisin people, are at a place in their history where this was also perfect from a conservation or sustainable development perspective. The community still had strong traditions, something I'd attribute to the fact that they've had a lot of their leaders go and live outside, live in towns, live in cities, have government jobs, be immersed in the cash economy, and then come back to the village. Through this, I think they've gotten a real appreciation for what they have in the village. From my experience, that appreciation or understanding of what you don't want to lose, or appreciation of what you've got, is one of the key elements or prerequisites for sustainable development.
Another factor was their real commitment not to log their area, and to develop alternatives. They demonstrated this commitment the first time I went there. I was amazed. I hadn't said I was from
Greenpeace, I was just a tourist when I first went there. Just in talking, they brought up a lot of these issues themselves. They paid for a delegation to go to Port Moresby to do a press conference and meet with the Minister for Forests to say we don't want logging in our area, don't sign off on any papers for us, we want to develop alternatives. So that gets back into not just having the choice between no change and total immersion in the cash economy, ruining your resource base, and having outsiders coming in and controlling the future. There is a path in-between and they're trying to shape that path. So that opened up the opportunity for the museum, and allowed for this collaboration between the community, the museum and Greenpeace to blossom.
LR: Lafcadio goes to Papua New Guinea all the time as part of his job, but we decided it was important for the museum to extend itself by my going to the village to actually meet with the people. It was a gesture of respect and a chance to engage in conversations about the exhibition. We're well aware and they are well aware of the potential for exploitation and inequity in these kinds of relationships, so we felt that person-to-person contact was very important. So Lafcadio and I went in August 1994 , spent five days there, and had extensive meetings with different groups within the Maisin society, from clan leaders to women's groups. Going to different villages and explaining about the museum, giving our thoughts about the exhibition and getting their ideas.
The more-or-less consensus of the Maisin people at the end, at least what was represented to us by the Maisin leaders and which has subsequently been modified somewhat, was that they did want very much to present their tapa art here at the museum and simultaneous with the presentation of this artwork to have information about their social, cultural, and ecological situation provided. To use this event as a springboard for making contacts--just as we went there, they are sending people here to meet with not only other artists but with marketing representatives to help them develop a marketing base here for the tapa. So, it turns the exhibition into a very complicated but also rich, multi-faceted social experience.
Q: I was curious about some of the works the museum is taking into the collection.
LR: We had discussed the possibility of acquiring some sacred clan designs for the collection, with provisos that they could not be photographed or leave the museum. The Maisin subsequently decided not to do this because the question was becoming a point of contention in the community. The difference between clan designs and the works that we are showing, is that the clan designs are magic symbols and they are used for healing and for identity. Their use is restricted and they can't be bought or sold, they can't be photographed. They're sacred basically, while the ones we are showing are secular. They're just art. The average person might not be able to tell the
difference, although there does seem to be a different visual formal quality to the clan designs. They tend to be simpler, they're often representational, and they seem to have an intensity to them.
What is coming into the collection is a large commissioned piece. We commissioned a tapa piece that is 16 x 20 feet, much larger than normal. The maximum normal size is probably about 4 x 5 feet. The sizes of the panels is limited to the size of the trees that they can grow. They have in the past done pieces like ours, where they glue together a number of panels of cloth. A few years ago they made a very large piece for the Archbishop of Canterbury--I don't know if ours is bigger than his or not. This will be a collaborative piece done by the leading artists of many of the villages.
LC: The thinking behind that piece is really interesting. We were very concerned that the process of putting on the exhibition, and in particular the process of starting to market tapa, did not cause conflict, or as minimal conflict as possible in the community. We all wanted the process to improve cooperation, bring the community together. That's a real challenge. I mean, if one of the prerequisites for sustainable development is having an understanding of what you don't want to lose, another is the ability to work together. The ability to cooperate, identify shared goals, and then work together to achieve that.
We all wanted to make the whole process of putting together and having the show one of cooperation which would bring the communities together. I think we've already been relatively successful with the commissioned piece. It requires the clan groups to work together in a way they haven't before. That same type of cooperation is going to be required if those clan groups market their tapa and have each individual and the community benefit. It's a real challenge within this show and within the Maisin's adoption of the cash economy, how to balance individual gains with community gains and harmony.
These are some complicated issues that a lot of communities in Papua New Guinea are dealing with. I think this show is a small thing that the Maisin are starting with, and an even smaller thing is just putting that piece together. There have been conflicts and they're seeming to be able to resolve them so far. It's a good process for the Maisin in establishing or developing institutions within which to have those discussions about `what if this clan feels that that clan is getting more' or `this clan that is getting more feels like they're getting more because they're doing more of the work.' How do you have those discussions in our community? How do we get together for doing that? So the show is challenging the community to start to develop those institutions and have those discussions. We believe these discussions, and the entire project, are part of an ongoing process that is making bridges to the outside world, and having the outside world come on their terms, rather than strictly on the outside world's terms.