Photo: Ufer! Art Documentary

In traditional South Pacific societies, objects were produced for religious or social ceremonies, or for practical use in everyday life, but Western notions of ‘beauty’ and ‘art’ were absent. Nevertheless, the forms created by people nurtured in the tropical wilderness have the power to challenge our accepted ideas of art. From the late 19th century, when white missionaries and settlers first began to visit Oceania, the region’s traditional lifestyles and naked way of life were considered barbaric and were condemned and suppressed, which contributed to the rapid decline of these traditional cultures.
Meanwhile, in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, artists such as the Surrealists became fascinated by the masks
and statues of Africa and Oceania, and the elements of grotesqueness and deformation that they incorporated into their own creations were surely tinged with a sense of exoticism.

This present exhibition features traditional objects from three Melanesian countries: tapa (bark cloth) from Papua New
Guinea, plaited pandanus cloth from Vanuatu, and shell money and string clothing from the Solomon Islands. These countries,
which together cover an area about 1.5 times the size of Japan, are currently home to about 10 million people and contain more
than 1,000 languages out of the world’s approximately 7,000 languages, a multi-ethnic region with the highest language density in the world. Each ethnic group has its own unique culture and creations, and for this exhibition, examples of the most prominent and well-developed of these have been selected.

The tapa, woven fabrics and shell money on display here could be used as clothing and ornaments, but more importantly, they have been valued as exchange goods for ceremonial purposes such as weddings and funerals etc. This being so, they are
created to entice and invite the admiration of the people of that society, and display an impressive perfection of beauty,
refinement and charm. These forms not only remind us of the value and importance of cloth in culture, they alert us to the fact that the original function of cloth transcended any merely practical uses such as clothing for the body.

Tapa is found not only in the South Pacific but also in other tropical regions throughout the world.* It is an early form of cloth made by stripping the outer bark from the trunks of mulberry and related species of trees, extracting the inner ligneous bark and pounding it flat. In Oceania it has been an important item of gift and exchange, and is used for loincloths,
waistcloths and other clothing, as well as for sheet cloth, bedding, tablecloths and home decoration. In the South Pacific, women are traditionally responsible for the production of tapa, on which various patterns are painted using plant or mud dyes
and pigments. Many of the patterns have been handed down for generations, in ethnic groups or within clans. This exhibition
presents a number of unique hand-painted patterns by the Maisin people, collected by FUKUMOTO Shigeki in Oro Province, Papua New Guinea, between 1971-80 and 2020.

The central area of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu is one of the few places in the world to have preserved the art of making
pattern-dyed pandanus cloth money. The Apma people manufacture two types of pandanus cloth: the large sese, 80 cm wide and about 4 m long, and the smaller tsip, 30cm wide and around 1.3 m long. The cloth is woven mainly by the women, with warp and weft threads crossing diagonally, and once or twice a year the entire village gathers to dye it on a large scale. A
log is prepared and wrapped with the pandanus cloth, then covered with sheets of banana leaf sheath into which patterns have been cut. This is then rolled and wrapped with rope, boiled and dyed with red dye made by scraping the skin of the dye tree
laba’s roots with a shell. Like tapa, the weaves and dye patterns of pandanus cloth have names and associated stories handed
down from the ancestors.

Fukumoto Shigeki first visited Papua New Guinea in 1969 as a member of the Kyoto City University of Arts’ New Guinea Art
Research Team. He took full advantage of the opportunities offered by the expedition-based survey team and the commissioned collection of ethnic material, and at the age of 30 he published Melanesian Art (1976). He wrote:
‘This book attempts to flee Melanesian art om the kinds of false stereotypes and subjective judgments that are based solely on the superficial forms of the art. It could be said to be an interrogation of and protest against the romantic urge to return to the “primitive”.’ **

Through his observation of the circumstances and changes that have taken place in South Pacific art since the 1960s, Fukumoto has used his understanding of tapa and braided cloth to grasp the true nature of cloth as a medium of expression rather than of simply practical use. Cloth is a supporting material that has lightness, thinness and length, and its fibers allow for a variety of compositional techniques, patterns and coloring. Fukumoto says it has made him consider the reasons why he had been so deeply involved with fabric and dyes in his own creative work. On the other hand, FUKUMOTO Shihoko, who accompanied Shigeki to Papua New Guinea three times between 1971 and 1980, was impressed by the way the local people created forms that only they could create through their engagement with the natural world, and her subsequent renewed study of Japanese traditions led her to an encounter with indigo dyeing. The way the people of Oceania approach craftsmanship has remained a major inspiration for the creations of both Fukumoto Shigeki and Shihoko to the present day.

* In Japan, cloth made from mulberry fibre has long been known by the ancient name yufu, and has been used for clothing, Japanese washi paper, and for the paper wands sacred to the gods.
** From Melanesian Art (Kyuryudo, 1976), Introduction.