Stevie Fieldsend_Umbra series_2014_wood, glass, metal, fringe_dimensions variable.
Extract from Stevie Fieldsend's MFA thesis 2014: UMBRA: Revelations of malu as ancestral imprint
Stevie Fieldsend wrote the thesis in association with developing
the exhibition UMBRA which is currently showing at Artereal
Gallery from 6-30 August 2014.
Chapter 4 - Process/Studio: Emotional and
Cultural Perceptions of Life and Death, Family and Ritual.
This chapter describes the ritual of
receiving my malu in Samoa in 2014 as well as aspects of my studio practice and
how these two processes intersect and create a visual interpretation in my
final MFA installation. It also briefly outlines the background of my journey
to Samoa to provide a context to the project.
It describes a body of work made prior to travelling to Samoa and how that
was a preparation for undergoing the tatau. This work holds within it emotional
and cultural perceptions of life and death, family and ritual.
It will show how the acquisition of malu and
my imaginative response can be contained by the Pacific concept ‘Va’ as
described by Albert Wendt:
Important to the Samoan view of reality is
the concept of Va or Wa in Maori and Japanese. Va is the space between,
the betweenness, not empty space, not space that separates but space that
relates, that holds separate entities and things together in the Unity-that-is-All,
the space that is context, giving meaning to things. The meanings change
as the relationships/contexts change. (We knew a little about semiotics
before Saussure came along!) A well-known Samoan expression is Ia teu
le va. Cherish/nurse/care for the Va, the relationships. This is crucial in
communal cultures that value group unity, more than individualism: who perceive
the individual person/creature/thing in terms of group, in terms of va,
relationships.
In many ways my project is more about life
than ‘art’ per se, much like the tufuga’s
perspective of his tatauing being a way of life. Its primary purpose was to
give impetus to establish connections with my Samoan heritage and
reclaim my Samoan-ness – a journey of reconciliation. I had in the past created
a sealed container of my own narrow perceptions regarding tatau/malu as I
avoided contact with any Samoans, both
family or fellow artists. Both
studio practice and my research are integral in transforming the woundedness
and grief from a number of past situations: the exclusion from my father’s life
and then his will (this exile is also a separation from Samoan culture) and the
unsettledness towards my Samoan relatives who are the executors of that will -
into a space of reparation and meaningful connection to family on both sides.
This has resulted in a literal expression of Ia teu le va. In exploring the process and meaning of
tatau/malu I look at how those meanings can be used in contemporary artistic
expression.
I began this MFA project with the intention
of going to Samoa early in second year, however when the time came I knew that
was not possible emotionally or financially. So I safely researched from afar
through books, exhibitions and the internet. I made work referencing Sia Figiel’s
novel they who do not grieve about a Samoan grandmother with an
unfinished malu –pe’a muku (unfinished tatau) that caused perpetual shame passed from generations to generation,
mother to daughter.
I thought about the weight, shape and colour of shame and from this book and
other sources a substantial body of work was created; Love-Stretch,
Long-Stretch, Solve et Coagula and Descent.
Love Stretch, exhibited at
Roslyn Oxley Gallery in 2012 explores the complex nature of the maternal
relationship in a series of foetal-like blown glass forms suspended within
black skin-thin sheer pantyhose from inverted metal hooks. The tensions that
play between mother and child, love, connectedness and separation are the
essence of this installation. The following series of questions indicate more
closely my thoughts at the time and now in retrospect I see how this and the
next work is laying the foundations for reconnecting with Samoan culture and
receiving the malu - that which was missing.
Two important occasions initiated a process of va/teu la va thereby gradually changing my
project. The first of these was an entry of work, Solve et Coagula about the death of my Samoan father, at Rookwood Cemetery
Sculpture Award (a Sydney exhibition that asks artists to respond to death,
history and remembrance) in October 2013. Slumps of thick-shaped,
biomorphic, molten glass seeped over
and inside a series of charred, truncated blackened wood forms. The hot glass
itself had assumed and picked up an imprint memory of the wood grain, and when
separated and cooled is laid back down over the standing forms. Solve et Coagula is an alchemical term
and methodology used to describe the transformation of base metals into gold.
It literally means dissolve and bind or in terms of my work that something must
be broken down, dissolved before it can then be reconstructed. It also
intimates that the situation must be analysed before taking the useful
components to build a new direction.
Making work about my late father has given me the opportunity to connect
with him and have a new type of relationship. I see Solve et Coagula as a gift from him and a memorial to him that has and continues
to open many lines of communication for my art practice.
When I received the Rookwood Cemetery
Sculpture Award for this work it seemed to mark a major transition as well as
providing the means to pay for travel expenses.
I knew it was time to visit my father’s resting place in Samoa.
Secondly, my meeting with Leo Tanoi, as I
spoke about in Chapter 2, ignited a significant shift for my MFA project. In
talking with Tanoi, the first Samoan arts professional I had actually spoken
with, broke a long self-imposed isolation from interacting with the Samoan
community and the larger world of Pacific art practice. We talked about what it
is to be a Samoan in its many diverse forms today, attaining the malu and
making artwork in a Pacific diaspora context. In this conversation it was as if
he gave me permission to claim my Samoan identity. This in turn motivated me to
learn more about Samoa and to allow myself to acquire the malu. It also seemed
to provide the initiative to make the following works in 2014, just before I
journeyed to Samoa.
In
making the small stone forms, rather like fossils for Long-Stretch I
inserted and trapped soot inside of molten glass, that then expands inside of
hot glass and creates pockets of air - and when cooled the soot remains in its
original dusty form. (The ancient malu inks used candle-nut soot.)
The combination of materials: heavy
translucent stones tautly suspended and straining downwards within sheer black
pantyhose is ambiguous: feminine yet ballsy. They seem to be hanging about with
nothing to do, inert and at the same time waiting and alert. Waiting for the
guiding marks to be made apparent. In there for the long stretch. The idea is
implicit that we are born with an internal ancestral imprint, which emerges
externally on the body.
Exhibited alongside Long-Stretch
was Descent, made from a great mass of synthetic wool threads, almost a
coagulation of bluish and reddish stuff, found at Reverse Garbage. It looked
like a nervous system that had been stripped out of the body. Like one of
Psyche’s tasks I had to unscramble these great bundles into long skeins. I
needed to restore order, to find each thread. This 70 hour performance carried
out with attendant friends was as much part of the work as the finished piece.
I had selected the manhole site, 7 metres high in SCA gallery ceiling to hang
this great woollen ancestral lineage. It
fell in an avalanche of long tendrils into a convoluted heap down to the
ground. In the middle of the blue-grey mass was a central core of red iron
oxide.
Immediately after installing this work, I
travelled to New Zealand (my birth country), and Samoa.
My journey to Samoa in March 2014, three
months prior to the conclusion of this project marked a profound transformation
both personally and creatively. As soon as I arrived I went to see my Father’s
grave on our ancestral land’s burial site, Ululoa, for the first time since he
died over nine years ago.
Prior to this visit I had a discussion with
my cousin’s wife and her daughter who both have a malu,
about acquiring the malu in Sydney rather than Samoa, they then persuaded me to
get it whilst in Samoa. My initial reasons for wanting the malu were quite
instinctual – to do with belonging, identity, to connect with my forebears and
also to obtain the psychological and spiritual protection of the malu. This was
something I had been contemplating for a few years, as I had previously been
given permission to do so by my Samoan
relatives.
Here I will describe the acquisition of malu
in detail: the Tufuga
tatatau, Su’a Peter Sulu’ape instructed me to bring 10
yards of pure cotton lavalava (sarong), one dozen eggs, turmeric powder and
coconut oil. He stipulated the strict protocols that must be adhered to when
receiving the malu. The recipient must not enter a fale (house) without a lava
lava on - I wore my Grandmother’s lava lava for the malu – for protection and
connection. People who want to watch must come inside the fale and sit down.
They must not stand behind tufuga whilst he is tatauing. Each person receiving the
tatau must have a partner who is also getting the tatau on
same day to share the pain. Strict protocols after acquiring the malu are set
out as follows; after the malu is completed recipients must be
accompanied at all times, day and night, for two days to protect the new malu
and in order to ward off bad spirits/energy from entering a healing malu.
Recipients must sleep on a mat on the floor for two nights next to a female guardian. They must not reveal malu unless dancing the traditional Samoan
dance – siva or taulauga or flaunt or show top band of malu. I have discussed
this last aspect and my challenge to it in Chapter 2.
The tatau tool kit consists of a set of ‘au (tattoo combs), a sausau (wooden mallet) and Sulu’ape black –
tatau ink. The process takes three hours and besides the tufuga tatatau Su’a Peter Sulu’ape, two skin
stretchers/assistants were present. There is no discussion prior, during or
after regarding the design. It is primarily the tufuga’s
domain to decide what motifs he bestows on the recipient, it is at once a gift
and a honorary artwork that is shared between tufuga and recipient for a
lifetime. However it is important to remember that the motifs themselves belong
to tufuga and his family. He started the tatau with the bottom band on the back
of my knee with an au, his assistants stretched my skin, wiped off the blood
along with excess ink and fanned the flies away. After he finished with the
bottom band at back of knee he worked his way up to the top band at back of my
upper thigh, then began the process again on each side of leg and then on front
of leg, finishing with eight neat symmetrical columns on each leg that are
bordered with a band at each end.
An excerpt from my diary gives an accurate
description of the process: the first leg went well in terms of pain, I was
self-conscious but chatting and smiling with my family who were sitting around
me. The second leg was an entirely different experience – a world of pain –
gone was the self-consciousness, I didn’t care what anyone thought at this point, just trying to cope with
the pain and not move or tense a muscle, praying to my dad and nana to help me
get through it. My cousin’s wife laughingly told me I
looked like I was in labour – which would best describe the intensity of such
agony. This is where family comes fully into the picture offering words of
comfort and support, feeding me and fanning me.
In the last half-hour my body went into shock, the tufuga told my cousin
to get me a coke, it was at this point the tufuga said to me ‘hang in there’ which was the only thing he said to me in the entire process apart
from telling me where to position my legs. I really needed to hear that and one
of his helpers stroked the bottom of my foot for a couple of seconds which went
a long way. I felt as if I was losing
consciousness and then I heard my family say this is the last line to go – best
thing I’d heard ever!
At the conclusion of the tatauing process my
niece took me into a small hut off to the side of the fale, she washed me down
and showed me how to massage the ink into my skin. I was then led back into the
fale where the tufuga anointed me with a mixture of coconut oil and turmeric
powder, he rubbed the paste into my arms and legs for healing. Immediately
afterwards he cracked open an egg and ate the yolk whilst he let the white of
it run on to my scalp symbolising my rebirth into a new life as a Samoan woman.
At that point Sulu’ape said a prayer and I paid him for the
malu. For the next two days and nights I slept on a woven mat on the floor with
my niece next to me.
The collaborative connection between Sulu’ape and myself
– the ‘va’ /teu la va
is cemented by the performance of bestowing a
malu on my body and for the rest of my life is a powerful and comprehensive
means of relationship -it aligns me not just to him from that given moment but
with both our ancestral lineages as well as with the Samoan community, my
family on both sides and all future and past relational engagements.
Once again from my diary: Receiving the
malu is a shared experience within the family… you must have a partner getting
a malu or pea on the same day to share the pain, I was paired with a man
getting a pe’a. Both my Samoan family and the tufuga’s family were present and I could see his wife, baby and father
over the far side of the fale as well as their friends coming and going,
hanging out making tatauing tools as well as tourists coming in to watch. It
was a normal family affair with everyone sharing in on the occasion, helping
out, being supportive and following the strict formalities of the ceremony
where everyone has their place and is respectful of traditional and present day
protocols, engaging with each other accordingly. There is no ‘I’ or ‘one’ in Samoan culture, everything is
shared.
This is why Wendt connects the concept of Va/
teu la va to the art of tatau/malu:
So tatauing is part of everything else that
is the people, the aiga, the village, the community, the environment, the atua,
the cosmos…….. other art forms and the future because a tatau or a malu is for
the rest of your life and when you die your children will inherit its
reputation and stories, your stories, stories about you and your relationships.
I will now describe how my final
work responds and interacts in an energetic dialogue with the ritual and
meanings of malu. I approach my work in an intuitive way where there is an
embryonic idea that insistently plays within my mind. Donald Brook, an Australian art theorist has
said that intuition is the result of prolonged tuition. Those almost unconscious
inklings and glimmerings informed by years of studio practice lead to
play/experimentation with materials and techniques alongside researching -
reading, conversation, exhibitions and international travel. There is a
conversation between myself and the work, where we take turns in leading,
forming, re-forming and extending the idea.
The materials themselves have their own instructions, their own ideas. I
also recognise that certain energies of force, endurance, punishment, obsession
and discernment play themselves out- in this respect both the making of my
work, the work itself and receiving the malu has alliances with performance
art. In my studio practice there is an element, rather like undergoing the
gruelling tatau process, of testing the limits, undergoing physical and
psychological confrontations with materials and ideas.
Glass-blowing can be seen as analogous to the
ritual of tatau as well as Va in that it is a collaborative event, it is
repetitive and is a performance of skill and bravura. Both take physical
strength and psychological stamina. In making my work I need a partner who I
then assist to make their work. An atmosphere of respect, collaboration and
trust is necessary. In taking hold of the molten material and working with it I
come to know intimately- its properties, its strengths and weaknesses as well
as its dangers and loveliness. It is a
seductive material. Much has been written of the alchemical processes in
working with glass - the transformation of
“base” matter into something precious. This transformative process is
duplicated when I carve and sand the tree trunks found in Kurrajong at the base
of the Blue Mountains. It is an enjoyable process of attending to every little
dip, bump, grain - it is personal and loving. It can also be brutal with the
use of chainsaws, grinders, chisels, fumigation and blowtorches. The trunks are
scarred all over with a solid black tattoo. The forms themselves undergo an
endurance test. Like the tatau it grounds me in my materiality, in my body. The work and the body are one.
As a bi-racial and bi-cultural woman I lead a
double life, or a life in between, that
liminal space, an ambiguous state (that
occurs in the middle of rituals) where the old is disintegrating and the new is
being formed. That doubling is echoed again and again from the origins of the
conjoined twins, to the shared ritual of tatau, to the symmetry of each
identical patterned malu-ed leg, to the design that is at once beneath skin yet
seen on surface. As Juniper Ellis writer of Tattooing the World
eloquently writes in reference to Samoan tatau/malu:
Tattoo can thus serve as both a transmission
of and a challenge to differing forms of authority, in a double movement that
encompasses the status of the designs; at once more than skin deep and marking
the skin as a surface, the patterns remain both inside and outside the body.
The figures by extension make visible subjectification, by which subjects claim
and are claimed by the processes that reproduce culture. The basic schema of
tattooing is thus definable as the exteriorisation of the interior which is
simultaneously the interiorisation of the exterior.
The final installation - a ceremonial space
prepared for visitors/participants - consists of multiple totemic forms referencing
the female body but indicating a super-human aspect with their elevated
heights. The central sculpture is a monument to the female atua
(spirit/goddesses) Taema and Tiliafaiga – the Siamese twins who brought the art
of tatauing to Samoa. Protectively flanked by eight forms, overflowing and
shaded with delicate inky blue-fringing they are evocative of ritualistic head
dresses used for celebrating malu. They
also conjure upside-down women with gowns fallen down revealing themselves,
displaying their upper legs. There is still a shadow of old pains, a
disembodiment and disassociation but it is held in check with a bit of
cheekiness - some frivolity and lightness. These particular sculptures mark a
significant point of departure from earlier work in their materiality, colour
and weight. The blown, light, coloured glass replaces the solid, clear, bulky,
glass… the weighty, hard, charred, wooden bodies are now sinuous, drifting with
layers of coloured threads however the female bodily forms remain. They are
held high and able to move. The accompanying video works and photographs
(documenting aspects of the project) also flow through the space revealing
real-life bodies. The endurance tests have been completed and new forms are
revealed. These reveal the motifs and the essence of malu – my family.
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