Bound by tradition

The theme of an art exhibit binds it together. So what happens when the theme of an exhibit, its binding principle so to speak, is the concept of binding?

That’s what you’ll see at "Binding & Looping: Transfer of Presence in Contemporary Pacific Art," an exhibit at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Art Gallery. The multimedia exhibit features the work of artists from Hawaii, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga, who created contemporary works while considering the notion of binding within their native culture.

"Binding can be social — in other words, you’re bound to your social group — but it’s technical, too, like binding the parts of a house," said Debo­rah Waite, a UH art history professor who curated the exhibit.

Waite asked more than 20 artists to produce something as a comment on their traditions of binding or looping, which is distinctive to New Guinea. Beyond that basic requirement, "they could do anything they wanted," Waite said.

The result is an exhibit of broad scope and variety. Some pieces take the idea literally, such as the collection of bilum bags, the slinglike bags that New Guinea natives suspend from the head — strap across the forehead, bag hanging down the back — and use to carry everything from infant children to daily groceries. But the bags also have a spiritual meaning — one tribe believes their primal mother made the first bilum bag, while the inner sanctum of a man’s house is called the bilum.

Waite, who owns a bilum bag, said the looping pattern of each bag is so distinctive that natives can recognize its origins by looking at the weave.

"It’s very flexible but you can’t break it, so it’s like one continuous thread," she said of her own bag.

Other pieces politicize the notion of binding, such as a piece by local artist Kapu­lani Landgraf. Her complex installation "Maluna nou ke ko‘i­ko‘i" includes a weblike structure and images of local politicians and how they voted on a bill that eased development of rail, potentially putting native burial grounds at risk.

The piece is a comment "on how we bind people to their responsibilities," Waite said. "Binding is really important in Hawaiian culture. … There are rituals in which people are bound to each other or to their chief."

Another Hawaii artist, Noelle Kahanu, created a Hawaiian cape made of small yellow ribbons imprinted with the words "Mai Poina," which refers to ribbons that Queen Liliu­oka­lani gave to supporters during her imprisonment, urging them, "Don’t Forget." Kahanu saw one of the ribbons at Bishop Museum.

"There’s a poem that goes with the piece, which is this idea of what it is that we’re not forgetting," Kahanu said. "It’s not just that we’re not forgetting the queen or we’re not forgetting the kingdom, but the fact of the historical significance of our presence as a people through time, and the notion that we shall be that again."

Kahanu also made two Hawaiian feather standards known as kahili. One of them, "E Koko Mai," is made of red feathers, which refer to the blood that flows through the umbilical cord and its significance as "what binds us together as a people," she said.

Her other kahili, called "Kahili kohi," is more personal. It is made of white medical gauze, which refers to an illness her mother suffered that required her leg to be amputated. "It’s not so much trying to take something sad and turn it into something beautiful; it’s that there’s beauty in everything, that’s all around us," Kahanu said.

One of the more striking works in "Binding and Looping" is "Niko­niko," a spiraling tower by Tongan artist Filipe Tohi. Tohi bases his work on the traditional house-building technique known as "lalava," a term for the weaving and lashing used to bind beams and posts together. He believes the patterns are a subtle reminder of the dualities in life — life and death, male and female, night and day.

For "Nikoniko" he stacked long, rectangular strips of wood one on top the other, allowing light to shine through and creating an open, latticelike structure that is both imposing and delicate. The structure is based on lashing patterns that have been expanded into three dimensions and rotated.

"When you join things together, you will wrap things vertically or horizontally, but I have to think about bringing in more dimensions," he said. "(The weaving) is not just vertical and horizontal, but it also (goes) diagonally, which is why it spirals up."