'Standing on the edge of the abyss' (2015) by Maia Nuku

Standing on the edge of the abyss: Shigeyuki Kihara, catalyst for change MAIA NUKU ‘I stand at the edge of the abyss, yet I do not fall in.’ Gauguin wrote the words to a friend on the eve of his departure for Tahiti in 1891, no doubt cognisant of the threshold with his past that was about to be breached. The prophetic words of Gauguin could be a further codex to each of the works in Shigeyuki Kihara’s latest series of black and white photographs: ‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’  \_MV\a _WZS[ \PI\ ÅVL \PM IZ\Q[\ QV ZMÆMK\Q^M UWWL JMIZQVO witness to the devastation caused by the tsunami and cyclone that ravaged Samoa between 2009-12. Kihara has revived her nineteenthcentury muse and alter ego Salome1 to explore this next chapter in an increasingly expansive art practice. Having spent many years mining the ethnographic archive, glimpsing history in the frames of colonial photographs and postcards, Kihara now returns to the sites of those PQ[\WZQM[\WZMÆMK\WV\PMQZUI\MZQITTMOIKQM[?Q\P\PMTMV[VW_LQZMK\ML away from her body (heretofore the site of much debate and discussion), Kihara shifts the emphasis onto the vitality of the landscape around her, planting her feet in the soil and sand in a bid to further penetrate the cultural and political history of Samoa, all the while raising issues XMZ\QVMV\\W\PMJZWILMZ8IKQÅKZMOQWV Silhouetted against a broad expanse of cloud-scudded sky or lost in a shadowy tangle of foliage, the atmosphere bears down on this solitary IVLQUUWJQTMÅO]ZMPMI^aQV\PMN]TT[SQZ\MLJTIKSLZM[[WN >QK\WZQIV era mourning. Weighty moiré skirts appear to grind into the coarse sand of an empty beach ()N\MZ<[]VIUQ/IT])Å4ITWUIV]), to billow on the springy lawns of the former Mau headquarters (Mau Headquarters, Vaimoso), or unobtrusively soak up the pool of rainwater that has seeped into a ruined church (Agelu i Tausi Catholic Church, Mulivai Safata). Insects, air, the noise and colour of life – all apparently sucked out by a vacuum WN XZM[[]ZMIN\MZ\PM[\WZU<PMUWWLQ[ITUW[\IXWKITaX\QK\PMÅO]ZM something of a spectral visitor sweeping between island locations to [QTMV\Ta QVPIJQ\ \PM[M [QOVQÅKIV\ TIVL[KIXM[ · SMa [Q\M[ WN  MVKW]V\MZ union, disaggregation, growth, abundance, violence. Each photograph is a single piece of a larger puzzle, which when pieced together, will tell \PMK]T\]ZITIVLXWTQ\QKITPQ[\WZaWN \PQ[8IKQÅKQ[TIVLVI\QWV In these startling monochrome images, Kihara pivots on the threshold of time and space understood conceptually in Polynesia as va, a ‘space between … not empty space, not space that separates, but space that relates, that holds separate entities and things together.’2 This dynamic liminality or ‘between-ness’3 is a conceptual model that lends itself particularly well to the navigation of multiple identities, postcolonial histories and inter-cultural encounters. Here Kihara deploys it to encompass multiple aspects of temporality within the space of the frame. In contrast to .I¼INIÅVM"1V\PM5IVVMZWN I?WUIV (2004-05),4 in which the artist resolutely confronted the eyes of her beholder, here her back is turned away. Angling herself obliquely within the frame is a departure of sorts for this artist, who nevertheless understands the power there is to be had in occupying liminal space. Anchored between land and sky, the artist is moved to ponder the same philosophical questions posed by Gauguin in his epic 1897-98 painting of the same name, D’ou venons nous? Que sommes nous? Ou allons nous? (Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going). In facing away from the viewer, Kihara does not completely turn her back, but instead QV^Q\M[][\W[]XXWZ\PMZQV\PM[MZMÆMK\QWV[5WZM\PIV\PQ[[PMINNWZL[ her audience a unique vantage point within a thoroughly Polynesian conceptual framework of space and time: viewers inhabit a privileged position alongside her, as she prepares to walk backwards into the uncertainty of the future. Standing on this multi-dimensional threshold, Kihara faces forward to confront the complexity of the known past, perfectly poised to enlist the support of her forbears, ancestors very much alive in the landscape who will inform and guide her. Though apparently empty, these photographs are far from silent or languid. Each landscape gently reverberates, very much alive and populated with the histories of the past, voices and memory that Kihara is at pains to scrutinise. It is intriguing, or perhaps rather inevitable that Kihara would choose to reference Paul Gauguin’s most ambitious painting and consciously enter into dialogue with the artist. Gauguin famously spoke of the painting’s shifts in register as ‘violent harmonies’,5 distinguished, notes Hal Foster, Ja [WUM\PQVO PM QLMV\QÅM[ I[ »^Q[QWVIZa ÆW_¼· I N][QWV WN  »LQNNMZMV\ temporalities, past, present & future’,6 which are held suspended and in constant tension. This is the enigma, he suggests, that Gauguin worked hard to sustain rather than resolve and the element which ultimately keeps his art alive for us.7 Certainly the ‘ever-presence’ of ancestors was something the French painter absorbed early on during his period of residence in Tahiti, for it was a theme he revisited in many of his paintings. In Mana’o Tupapa’u (Watched by the Spirit of the Dead), (1892) and Merahi metua no Tehamana (Tehamana has many ancestors) (1893), the spirits of ancestors (or tupapa’u) are not so much the haunting or ‘evil’ presence, which has pervaded interpretation of Gauguin’s oeuvre to date, but more a formidable link in the genealogical stitching of ancestral time and space. The suspension of time and origins is revisited in another fascinating image by Gauguin, l’Univers est crée (The Universe is Created) – one of a series of ten woodcuts that Gauguin worked on in Tahiti between December 1893 and March 1894.8 Intended to illustrate Noa NoaPQ[ÅK\QWVITQ[ML yet personal account of life in the islands, these dark, raw images give us far deeper insights into the extent of immersion into Polynesian spiritual life, which Gauguin so desperately sought. Capturing a time when the ]VQ^MZ[M _I[ MZ]X\QVO QV\W KWV[KQW][VM[[ XZQUWZLQIT _I\MZ[ W^MZÆW_ ZMTMI[QVO XZMPQ[\WZQK Å[P IVKQMV\ ZWKS IVL [XZW]\QVO ^MOM\I\QWV Sketched skeletal forms and amphibian teeth join the veiled presence of ancestral spirits, observing from shadowy recesses, as elemental light pierces through the barrier of night and vegetal human-life begins to (continued page 14) 10 | BROADSHEET | Summer 2015 Shigeyuki Kihara, (NLS\P;H\ZP*H[OVSPJ*O\YJO(M[LY*`JSVUL,]HU4\SP]HP:HMH[H 2013. c-print, edition of 5 + 2 AP, 795 x 1040 mm. Courtesy of the artist and Milford Galleries Dunedin, New Zealand. Summer 2015 | BROADSHEET | 11 coalesce. Normal boundaries are apparently eclipsed in this generative landscape of tupu noa·[XWV\IVMW][IVLNZMMÆW_QVOOZW_\P·[W\PI\ \PMÅO]ZMWN I_WUIVVM_TaMUMZOMLNZWUIKP]ZVQVOWKMIVTQ\MZITTa teeming with burgeoning life, draws breath, whilst wringing out her hair on the beach. Much of Shigeyuki Kihara’s work to date has been concerned with recovering early pre-Christian perspectives, motivated not in a denial of the complex history of Samoa, but in a bid to recover lost knowledge and redress some of the skewed imbalances of colonialised memory. 1V\PQ[[MV[M[PMI[S[[QUQTIZY]M[\QWV[WN PMZQ[TIVL[I[/I]O]QVÅZ[\ did of Tahiti. Arii Matamoe (The Royal End) (1892) was his own rather brutal homage to pre-Christian indigenous culture in its depiction of the head of the last Tahitian chief, Pomare V, lying in state and mourned by islanders. Persistent disillusionment drove Gauguin to peer ever more keenly into all-pervasive landscapes of ancestral immersion that he could easily glimpse throughout Polynesia, but in the end never quite penetrate. Seen through the lens of Gauguin’s complex and vivid images, Kihara has herself prompted in us subtle, perhaps unexpected re-readings of this latest suite of photographs. As an artist interested QV KWV\QV]ITTa M`\MVLQVO PMZ ZMXMZ\WQZM _M ÅVL 3QPIZI PMZM X][PQVO at the boundaries of her art practice; as activist and provocateur these works set out to galvanise historical consciousness and champion a re_QZQVOWN 8IKQÅKPQ[\WZa ENDNOTES 1. Inspired by a late nineteenth-century photograph by Thomas Andrew of an unnamed woman entitled Samoan Half Caste, Kihara was moved to create a history and identity for this woman, naming her Salome after the notorious dancing seductress of New Testament tradition, and appears as her in a number of works including Taualuga: the last dance (2006); Siva in Motion (2012) and /IT])Å (2012). 2. Albert Wendt, ‘Tatauing the Post-Colonial Body’ in Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity QV\PM6M_8IKQÅK>QT[WVQ0MZMVQSWIVL:WJ?QT[WV4IVPIUML[5,":W_UIV4Q\\TMÅMTL!!!" 399-412, [402]. 3. ibid. 4. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented a solo exhibition of Kihara’s work entitled Living Photographs (Oct 7 2008–Feb 1 2009). Curated by Virginia Lee-Webb, the exhibition highlighted the range of Kihara’s inter-disciplinary practice presenting an exhibition of contemporary works alongside archival photographs and a live performance of Taualuga: the last dance. In addition to the works My Samoan Girl (2004-5) and Ulugali’i Samoa: Samoan Couple (2004-5\PMU][M]UIKY]QZML.I¼INIÅVM" In the Manner of a Woman, Triptych I in 2009 and the remaining Triptychs II and III in 2014, which now complete the series. 5. Gauguin uses the term in a letter to André Fontainas, March 1899 in Henri Dorra (ed.), Symbolist Art Theories: A Critical Anthology, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994: 209 6. Hal Foster, ‘The Primitivist’s Dilemma’, in Gauguin Metamorphoses, Starr Figura (ed.), New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2014: 48-59, [54]. 7. ibid: 57. 8. Three of these prints are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Prints and Drawings (accession nos. 21.38.3, woodcut on china paper; 36.6.6 and 36.6.7, woodcuts printed in colour on wove paper). Two recent exhibitions have explored the implications of Gauguin’s highly innovative printing techniques in his broader art practice: Gauguin’s Paradise Remembered: The Noa Noa Prints at Princeton University Art Museum, September 25, 2010–January 2, 2011; Gauguin: Metamorphoses at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, March 8–June 8, 2014. Paul Gauguin, l’Univers est créé (The Universe is Created), from Fragrance (Noa Noa), 1893–94, Woodcut on china paper, dimensions: 20.3 x 35.4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1921 (21.38.8). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1 4 |B R O A D S H E E T | S u m m e r 2 0 1 5