IMAGO MUNDI Katonimana: Contemporary Artists from Fiji and the Solomon Islands, curated by Rosa Maria Falvo for the Benetton Foundation

KATONIMANA: Contemporary Artists from Fiji and the Solomon Islands

The Pacific Ocean is the largest, oldest and deepest of the world’s ocean basins. Covering something like 155 million square kilometres, with more than half of the free water on Earth, it is said that all the continents could fit, jigsaw-like, into its “Ring of Fire”. Its ancient rocks have been dated at around 200 million years and its intense seismic and volcanic activities near tectonic plates have created most of what we know as the Pacific Islands. Indeed, Fiji, in the South, is actually a scattering of over 330 islands located in the expanse between Australia and Hawaii, but only one third of them are inhabited. Grouping people in racial terms and perceived similarities, most European historians recount that Austronesian people came into the Pacific from Southeast Asia via Indonesia, and that the Melanesians and Polynesians mixed to create a highly developed society very long before the arrival of Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1643, who was the first European to visit. English navigators, including Captain James Cook, sailed through in 1774 and made further explorations throughout the 18th century, along with their Christian counterparts. But society there was not at all as they knew it. Prior to the 19th century the Fijians practiced human sacrifices, and in one famous instance in 1867 Methodist missionary Thomas Baker led a party to spread the gospel on the islands. Baker had gifted a British hair comb to a local chief, trying to persuade him to convert to Christianity. When the chief refused Baker took back his bible and comb, touching the chief's head as he did so, which was taken as a threat and insult. Baker was promptly killed and cannibalised together with 8 Fijian Christian workers, and the sole from one of his leather sandals can still be found today in the Fiji Museum in Suva. Just a year later Chief Cakobau, who had converted and gained control of most of western Fiji, actually sold Suva, the current capital, to an Australian company. Following local disorder, European settlers at Levuka Island organised a national government and named Cakobau the King of Fiji in 1871. Just three years later, Fiji became a British colony at the request of its king and other chiefs, and from 1879 to 1916 more than 60,000 indentured labourers were brought in from India to work on the rich sugar plantations. In 1970 Fiji finally achieved independence with Ratu Sir Kamisese Kapaiwai Tuimacilai Uluilakeba Mara as prime minister. But rivalry between indigenous Fijians and ethnic Indian communities (now about 40% of the population) has caused much of the political upheaval in the country. The infamous Fiji coups in May and September of 1987 eventually resulted in the overthrow of the elected government of Prime Minister Timoci Bavadra, the deposition of Elizabeth II as Queen of Fiji, and the declaration of an independent Republic of Fiji.

More than 2000 kilometres northwest lie the Solomon Islands, consisting of an archipelago of 6 major islands, Choisuel, Guadalcanal, Malaita, Makira, New Georgia, and Santa Isabel, and over 900 smaller atolls, which were inhabited thousands of years ago. In 1568 Spanish navigator Alvaro de Mendana was the first European to visit and name them in true colonial style. Much later Britain and Germany defined their interests, but in 1893 Captain Gibson Royal Navy declared the southern Solomon Islands a British protectorate, which lasted until its independence in 1978, with a population speaking dozens of languages and following vastly contrasting traditions. This country also saw terrible conflict when Fijian soldiers under British command fought against the Japanese on Guadalcanal in the “Pacific theatre” of World War II, the first major offensive by Allied Forces against the Empire of Japan. Quests for land and power have since fuelled ethnic violence, and in 2003 Australia led a regional peace-keeping force which only just ended its mission in June 2017.

Geography, like timing, is everything. Today both island nations boast spectacular reefs, pristine nature reserves, private islands, celebrity resorts, agricultural economies, and rising urban development. Melanesia set the stage for profound differences between coastal people and those of the interior, particularly in the more isolated valleys and forests. So the region is characterised by many small groups living in village settings, distinguished by extended bloodlines and very specific customs. Many consider themselves to be part of an immediate family of 200 and are able to trace their ancestors through several generations. Traditionally most families and communities have typically relied on their own capacities to gather food and necessities for themselves. Cultural contrasts that seemed obvious to early European visitors concealed similarities that can still be found in the core cultural value of reciprocity. Whether a group is small, with influential leaders, or larger, with chiefs who are utterly revered, every gift or human service needs to be reciprocated. This also reflects the dynamics of the natural world, where equilibrium is paramount and the consequences of imbalance are often immediate. 

Fiji is known for its hospitality. Bula (literally meaning “life” and implying good health and happiness) is a constant greeting, along with a sense of protracted “Fiji time” that was made clear by an amusing clock on the wall of the main airport café. Our first meeting with a group of artists was in the gazebo of the Fiji Museum with a customary Kava ceremony. Following etiquette, we sat barefoot in a circle on the floor while the Yaqona root we had previously stopped to buy at someone’s home was ground up and strained through cloth into a wooden bowl and placed in the middle of our meeting. The seniors drank first and then it was offered to everyone: one clap with a cupped hand and a loud “Bula!” and then 3 claps with a thankful “Mathe” to finish, before doing the rounds again and again. Being a mild narcotic, it literally tasted like bitter, muddy water and it made my tongue and mouth tingle with numbness for quite a while. But it was obvious to our hosts that I had just been accepted into the fold and could therefore continue the special purpose of my visit. 

As artists and Pacific Islanders, most of those represented in this collection have limited international visibility and therefore little circulation and distribution of their work. Information is not well coordinated and although some artists are aptly using self-promotion tools, like Facebook, the sheer volume of imagery and its myriad sources hardly translates into many real and personal opportunities. Europe has long imagined stories of a paradise where friendly natives enjoy entirely carefree lives under tropical skies. Such tales are still perpetuated today, but the pressures of modern living and the need for people, especially the young, to define and express themselves is not without its particular problems in this part of the world. Unsurprisingly, the artworks seen here predominantly feature elements and symbols from the natural world, whether through traditional motifs or contemporary interpretations. One of the younger artists in this collection has used an explicit title - “Ancestors Don’t Paint Anymore” – and a memorable image to indict what he sees as the commodification of Pacific motifs and creative intuitions. He is denouncing the gradual erosion of his cultural identity and laments the loss of the kind of art that for him had emotional and spiritual applications. Most of the South Pacific designs feature spirits and dreams, weavings and sculptures in wood and various plant fibres, paper, stone, clay, feathers, and even shells, to collectively narrate complicated histories, both personal and political. Some are even individual feats given the context some of these artists are working in. Having metabolised colonisers, missionaries, military coups, social upheaval, and economic and/or educational disadvantage, some of these artists have stored up powerfully expressive imaginations. To understand and appreciate what they do one must look into rich symbolism and the circumstances of their practice. The entire Imago Mundi project and this KATONIMANA Collection, within Benetton’s Oceania collections, is intended as a celebratory promotional tool for artists which raises awareness of their shared consciousness across ocean spaces and time. The surrounding natural beauty appears eternal and unconditional in the eyes of these artists.

Making our way back to Australia, we had a brief and thankfully faint reminder of Mother Nature’s potential fury, as the effects of a tropical storm grounded our flight from Suva for several hours. Exactly one year earlier, Cyclone Winston, the worst so far on record in the southern hemisphere, hit Fiji in February 2016, killing 42 people and leaving thousands homeless. That same month Fiji became the first country in the world to formally approve the UN climate deal after its parliament ratified the Paris agreement. Fiji was also a protagonist in New York in June 2017. The Prime Minister of Fiji and Co-President of the UN Ocean Conference, Josaia V. Bainimarama, alongside Isabella L?vin, Minister for International Development Cooperation and Climate, and Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, led a delegation of more than 8,000 official representatives from around the world to take immediate action to conserve and sustainably use the Earth’s oceans, seas and marine resources. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres also recently appointed Fijian diplomat Peter Thomson as his Special Envoy for the Ocean, aiming to galvanize efforts for the 1400 voluntary commitments made so far in support of the 2030 International Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Here I am reminded of one of the greatest minds in world literature and his constant probe into the psychological landscapes and changing climates of the human condition. History tells us that it is difficult for human beings to live peacefully for very long in paradise, but the “lonely poets” have always offered hope: "Do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we do not want to know it, and if we did want to know it, tomorrow there would be paradise the world over" - Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

My own hope is that leaders and communities alike will finally, in unison, decide that Mother Nature and her human family can no longer be at odds, and that we must collectively choose creation over destruction, reconciliation over conflict, preservation over consumption, and conservation over waste. Essentially, this is also what our Katonimana represents - full of unique gifts from afar that began their journey as a box of canvases sent to the Pacific and returned to Italy as a box of artworks, which in turn gave rise to a boxed collection and a large box of books to be shared between two antipodal destinations. Imago Mundi is a truly extraordinary and ingenious way to set sail into the contemporary world with a new spirit of hope.  

 ? Rosa Maria Falvo