Paperskin: An introduction
Maud Page
In admiration of the Pacific barkcloth samples brought home by early explorers, Elizabeth Cook embroidered and fashioned a waistcoat from this cloth for her husband’s expected return in 1780.1 Captain Cook, however, never felt its supple and silky texture on his skin: only his bones knew the material, when these were carefully bundled in Hawaiian barkcloth after his violent death at Kealakekua Bay in 1779. Barkcloth — wrapped around chiefly bodies, dancers, brides, grooms, babies and the deceased, or offered as ceremonial gifts — is the subject of the ‘Paperskin’ exhibition, and conjures precious narratives from the Pacific.
Across one third of the world, and over many centuries, Pacific people have been creating, adapting and repeating designs on the fibrous barkcloth surface. These creations can be utilitarian, but most are still used in important ceremonies. Some barkcloths record the passage of time, such as the Tongan ngatu featured in ‘Paperskin’, which depicts Tonga’s World War Two alliances.2 Similarly, Niuean hiapo was sometimes used as parchment to inscribe the names of people and tracts of land, which often indicate the date the hiapo were created.3 In other cultures, such as that of Papua New Guinea’s Baining people, barkcloth is used to construct impermanent, intricate sculptures dedicated to transcendence of the temporal world.
Whatever the intent, most barkcloths exhibit an extraordinary array of dexterously applied geometric forms that transfix the eye. From the fine crosshatch work of the Solomon Islands and Futuna practitioners to the bold, angular lines in Fijian textiles, and to the combination of straight and curved mark-making on Papuan barkcloths, there is in each an aesthetic of symmetry and dynamism. ‘Paperskin’ celebrates this art form, accentuating the diversity of its two-dimensional and sculptural practice while also noting some of the striking synergies in both pattern and use.
To those outside the communities in which they are generated, barkcloth’s visual idiom is largely incomprehensible.4 In Papua New Guinea, for example, much of the information in barkcloth designs is not meant to be shared with outsiders. The Omie women from Oro (or Northern) Province, on the country’s north-east coast, speak of the cloths as their ‘wisdom’ and, of the symbols in their works, will recount only those intended for outsiders. The titles of their barkcloths (nioje) refer to the rich, volcanic landscape that dominates their villages, including Mount Lamington, mountains with clouds, jungle vines, tree bark, spider webs, frogs, and the backbones of mountain fish. Yet, each woman imagines this same landscape differently. Vivian Marumi’s depiction of jungle vines is row upon row of symmetrical freehand horizontal lines, as thick as a canopy. In contrast, Pauline Rose Hago’s image of this same jungle is chaotic, filled with spirals, diamond shapes and blocks of colour. This interpretive freedom is bountiful and produces an incredible diversity in barkcloths made within the same small, remote community. Australian writer Drusilla Modjeska spent time with these artists, and recounts that:
When a woman comes into her vai hero (wisdom), it is not simply that she has learned the iconography, but that she lives it so fully that it forms, and informs, her relationship with the cloth.5
Modjeska’s engagement with the nioje, and her attempt to divulge customary knowledge of the work and practice to a Western audience, is evocative of how other barkcloth from the Pacific can be viewed:
While the alphabet of motifs can be named, it is absorbed in such a way that parts do not require naming. The iconography works not by being broken into separate elements, but by a complex patterning of sensation and image that is not translatable — a way of seeing that is affective as well as instructive.6
As with much other Pacific barkcloth, the Omie’s nioje is a physical manifestation of the makers — who they are, their locality, their history and their cosmology. Titles of abstract works, such as ‘clan history’ and ‘wisdom’, allude to these textiles’ genealogical memory. The Omie say their wisdom is intertwined with the wellbeing of Mount Lamington. Its eruption in 1951, the resulting deaths of 4000 of their Orokaivian neighbours and their own dislocation is interpreted as a consequence of the war on the Kokoda Trail which, among other horrors, grounded the dead soldiers’ restless spirits. Some Omie blamed the eruption on the persistence of customary practices over those of Christianity, and proceeded to erase many of them. As a consequence, initiation ceremonies and the ensuing tattooing of clan insignia on the body ceased and designs were instead transposed to barkcloth. Artist Nerry Keme has said, ‘I paint on barkcloth the designs that were on my grandparents’ bodies’.7 These materialise on the nioje as three small concentric circles, repeated in several configurations across the textile, and were once confined to the area around the navels of her ancestors. In reviewing this dynamic transposition, Modjeska refers to these as ‘double skin’ designs.
When speaking about barkcloth, the allusion to marked skin is particularly evocative and has been used in connection with other Pacific practices. Anthropologist Alfred Gell noted that the Marquesans called their full-body tattoos pahu tiki, which translates as ‘wrapping in images’. Researching Samoan tattooing practices, he later concluded that they functioned as a second skin — wrapping, protecting and containing the person’s essence. The similarity of motifs from Samoan tattoos to their siapo (barkcloth) is evident in works from the collection of Wellington’s Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, such as a 1940s example composed of horizontal rows of triangles.8 Many Pacific peoples, most notably Tongans and Fijians, also wrap their bodies in barkcloth for important ceremonies. Like tattooing, the cloth confers an entire matrix of meaning on the bearer. A drawing from 1877 shows a Fijian chief layered head to toe in masi with an accompanying description around that time, claiming that over 200 metres of cloth could be used for this purpose.
There are many accounts of barkcloth being treated as an extension of the body — an extension of the skin. Samoans would wrap barkcloth around the bride, and the material would then be ritually stained by the first intercourse.9 Fijians rubbed turmeric on their masi as well as on the bodies of a new mother and baby, binding them indistinguishably in this sweet-smelling, warm, earthy spice. Likewise, the dead were also impregnated with turmeric and laid upon masi in their grave.10 In 1920s Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinean women used to crawl around the village beneath a barkcloth when mourning their husbands, the cloth isolating them from sight and contact.11
Archaeologists Chris Ballard and Meredith Wilson have posited a relationship between Melanesian rock art designs and those on tapa, specifically in mortuary contexts. The motifs, they argue, transfer between the two media and also appear in tattoos, carvings and engravings.12 As Ballard has said:
Most of the rock art sites with tapa motifs are burial sites, with human remains in cliff niches or caves, and there are lots of instances of tapa being used to cover the bones, as a form of surrogate skin.13
Other scholars have also pointed to the link between designs found on ancient Pacific Lapita pottery, tattooing and barkcloths, alluding to a complex aesthetic that is revitalised and used in a number of different art forms.14 This ubiquitous transference of motifs can be understood as a method of communication (particularly as the Pacific region had no written language prior to European contact), and its continued use suggests an audience for whom these symbols represent a particular sense of being and place.
For the Baining people of the mountainous Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, Papua New Guinea, the creation of barkcloth masks enacts an intricate relationship with both their everyday agricultural subsistence and that of the spirits, particularly those of the recently departed. The ten Baining masks in ‘Paperskin’ represent only a portion of the sculptures being made today, and include works from throughout the peninsula.15 The masks are worn by men, with rare exceptions, such as the two Siviritki masks that are accompanied by long fibre fringing that camouflages the dancer. Each of the ten masks — except for the four-metre-high, three-pronged work — exhibit the Baining characteristics of large, accentuated eyes, accompanied by vibrant designs painted directly onto the barkcloth in a restricted palette of red and black.
These complex sculptures are used for a single ceremony and then discarded, even though they consume much of the villagers’ time and resources. The abstract designs featured on both sides are drawn mostly from memory, allowing for individual interpretation and change. Although customarily using designs drawn from nature — such as wild vines, insects or even pig intestines (the latter being a pattern used in several masks in ‘Paperskin’) — more recent designs include those derived from car tyre treads, mission crosses and manufactured cloth, as well as introduced figurative elements, such as flags and the ‘thumbs up’ gesture.
The masks are produced for day or night ceremonies and represent female and male spirits in the form of animals or composite beings, such as bird–humans or snake–birds. Day dances are commonly associated with the commemoration of the dead and with the cyclical fertility of harvests and gardens, while night fire dances are thought to pertain to male initiation.
A 1931 written account of a night fire ceremony is remarkably similar to more recent accounts, from the 1970s to the mid 2000s, as described by collector Harold Gallasch. This points to the continued relevance of the practice despite the advent of modernity.16 Each begins by noting the anticipation of the villagers following a long period of mask preparation, which occurs in locations inaccessible to women and children. Pigs are killed, food is distributed and a large bonfire ignited in the centre of the village. Gallasch recounts:
. . . [A]t its zenith the chanting and drumming increased in tempo, as if in great urgency. Sweeping in from the blackness of the night, of the jungle, came the apparition of a bush spirit, a large white face outlined in red and black, large eyes to see in the darkness. As it came closer the disembodied face, shrouded behind the croton leaves, was propelled on black legs, pounding in time with the drumming, racing forwards, reversing, then stomping ever closer, the head swaying and pirouetting . . . children screamed in fear and ran to escape. In one last, swift burst of fervour, the masked apparition turned, raced and jumped in to the centre of the bonfire. There, for a few long seconds it stomped and twisted, burning sticks and embers scattering in all directions.17
The Baining masks in ‘Paperskin’ bear the traces of their performance: soot from fires, and the remnants of dyes and oils used to paint and perfume dancers’ skin.
However, these masks are more than theatrical devices: they allow for an interaction with, and a continuation of, a specific cosmology. Living in the Gazelle Peninsula in the 1970s, theologians Karl Hesse and Theo Aerts recorded that the ‘Baining worldview accepts as it were two worlds, in which the other one (a rimbab) is the replica of this world’.18 The invisibility of the rimbab becomes visible in the dances. Masked, their bodies adorned with paint and leaves, the dancers become the manifestation of spirits:
They show the forces of nature — but at the same time also their limitations — the power of man, and the ambiguity of his relationship with that which is constantly beyond his immediate grasp.19
In many cultures across the Pacific, barkcloth continues to be significant. The deliberate repetition of geometric patterns has enabled a visual idiom historically linking barkcloth with other important cultural practices such as tattooing and weaving, as well as defunct art forms such as rock engravings and Lapita pottery. Recognition and appreciation of these designs has ensured the art form’s ongoing practice. On a fibrous surface, using a restricted colour palette and limited combinations of linear and curvilinear non-figurative designs, barkcloth makers have created extraordinarily diverse works that mediate the social and spiritual transformation of both individuals and groups.
For some, the need to sustain this practice — to work communally, and to have goods to give and exchange — is so strong that, even when lacking the essential materials, they continue to innovate. In the mid 1990s in Sydney’s west, for example, Susana Kaafi gathered a group of women together to cut and glue interfacing material into long strips. Laying them onto a large makeshift table in Kaafi’s backyard, they then painted the strips — using the dust scraped from red bricks — with the gridded emblems of the Tongan monarchy alongside stylised images of the Sydney Opera house.
Maud Page is Curator, Contemporary Pacific Art, Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art.
