Blong Vanuatu
Vanuatu BlongBlong Vanuatu? - EyeContact
Patrice Cujo Cujo Ol Map Blong Vanuatu's eighteen pictures can perhaps be regarded as a late meeting between European Surrealism and Melanesia. Cujo refined the Vanuatu archipelago on a large scale and, like Eluard, the surrealist cartographer, he refined Melanesia in 1929. However, his cards have an Anthro-pomorphic character that is lacking on the Surrealists' renowned card, for the faces and links of strange beings appear from the contours of his island and remind us of the "picture cards" that were used in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
This edition contained writings by Andre Breton, the movement's lead journalist, Paul Eluard, their lead writer, and Sigmund Freud, their subconscious maker - but perhaps best recalled for an anonymity sketch named Le Monde au Temps des Surrealistes or The Surrealist MapĀ of the World. Probably the work of Eluard, the chart showed planets and planets in unknown forms and dimensions.
A surrealistic world map was both a politic and an aesthetical declaration. The surrealist mapmaker shrinks Europe to irrelevancy and wipes out the United States, mocking his imperio-centric allies. Several Pacific Isles, from Rapa Nui in the Eastern to New Guinea in the Western part, have been enlarged considerably.
Melanesia's significance in The Surrealist Map of the World was no coincidence: the area was possessed by surrealists. Complaining that the Africans' statue was too real, Breton juxtaposed it with the fantastically sculpted characters who had come to Europe from Melanesia. The 1936 Breton curatorial exposition of surrealist objects featured New Guinea, New Ireland and the New Hebrides alongside surrealist works of art and artifacts of contemporary US-consumption.
Melanesia knew Breton only through artifacts and ethnographical essays. Dusan Marak, a Bohemian artist who escaped the take-over of his native country by Stalin, seems to have been the only surrealist to have reached Melanesia. He traveled, influenced by the Surrealist world map, first to Australia and then to the New Guinea and Papua populations of Australia.
In 1954 he even organized an exposition of surrealist art for the growers and missionsaries of the Colonian capitol Port Moresby. However, many of Marak's canvas has been destroyed by the dampness of the tropics, and he spends more to count coco palms for growers in Australia than he did during his Melanesia years.
Patrice Cujo Cujo Ol Map Blong Vanuatu's eighteen pictures can perhaps be regarded as a late meeting between European Surrealism and Melanesia. Built in the city of Clermont-Ferrand in late World War II, Cujo moved to the New Hebrides in the 70s, when the Anglo-French Colonies became aware of a nationwide liberating struggle.
In the early 1980' the New Hebrides became Vanuatu, and Cujo assisted in founding the Nawita Association, which brought together whites and ni-Vanuatuists. Later, he assisted Caldoche educator Suzanne Bastien, who took a career in Vanuatu in the 60s and never went away to found a art space in Pango, a port resort in Port Vila, Vanuatu's capitol.
Now known as the Fondation Suzanne Bastien, the permanent exhibition features Ol Map Blong Vanuatu. Vanuatu Ol Map Blong is a phrase of Bislama, the Kreolic, which the workers of the New Hebrides used to improvise on 19th cent. 19th cent. 19th cent. salt plants. Cujo' s pictures are big. His smallest, his portrait of Efate and Tanna Islands, are 80 x 120 cm, the biggest, his portrait of Espiritu Santo, is 280 x 180 cm.
In refining the Vanuatu archipelago on a large scale, he refined it, as did Eluard, the surrealist cartographer, in 1929 Melanesia. He made Vanuatu cards between 1988 and 1991, first in Port Vila and then during a stay in France. One or more of his canvasses shows one or more isles with a mix of colour and collage-material.
However, his cards have an Anthro-pomorphic character, which is lacking on the Surrealists' renowned card, for the faces and links of strange, often humanoids originate from the contours of his isles. Cuijo may have something to thank for the satire of performers like Rose and Emmanuel, but he avoids their simple and clear.
Cuijo' pictures are much more mystifying. It painstakingly depicts the coastlines of its islets and describes their interior with contours. However, the colors he gives the archipelago often make no cartographical meaning, and his complicated contours turn into an uncanny shape. Kujo drew Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu's biggest isle, in 1989 and 1990, when he lived in France.
The Santo is formed like the L and Cujo gives its correct outlines. It is overgrown with hill and mountain, which is Cujo with many winding outlines. The most westerly parts of the archipelago he stroked bright blue and then used lighter, muddy colors for the south. These colors are sometimes used by mapmakers to indicate logging and degradation, but Santo, like most of Vanuatu's major isles, is still relatively thinly forested.
To the south-west of the isle, contours whirl together to create the form of a person seated cross-legged. Another character, who sometimes reserved the yellow-grey cartographer for sand banks and shallows, seems to dive into the northern shore of Santo: her feet and body are visible, but not her face or arm.
What could we do to interprete the creepy characters that come out of Cujos Santo and go back to him? Southwestern part of the country is remote and impoverished. In the south-west, there have long been complaints of negligence by the Vanuatu state. However, a dissatisfaction of distant regimes is nothing new in Santo. During the 60s and 1970s, a semi-literary dozer rider by the name of Jimmy Stevens founded a cult and politic organization known as Nagriamel, whose members opposed both traditional Christianity and the idea of a Vanuatu state.
Having received funding and a station from the Phoenix Foundation, a Dutch-American anarcho-capitalist group that wanted to create an unlawful dream in the South Pacific, Stevens said Santo and several other New Hebrides would separate from the new Vanuatu state, forming their own state known as Vemarama.
It was Stevens who set up an armies in the Santo shrub and arm them with bow and arrow. In 1980 they kept the Isle for two month until Papuan New Guinea troops arrived in Port Vila with advanced guns and post-colonial missions. Some deadly gunfire ended the Santo Secondession.
The body of the Prophesy is now in a sanctuary in the middle of the remains of Fonafo, the main town he made for Vemarama in the Santo outback. Can it be considered a historical memory of the violent events that almost separated the entire country from Vanuatu in 1980? Ambrym, an isle in the centre of Vanuatu, is formed like a delta ruled by a bad-tempered vulcano and infamous for its wizards.
Ferry travellers get anxious as they get closer or even cross the islands, and Ambrymesen, who have established themselves in Port Vila, are the targets of local unrest blaming them for illness and aggravation. Cuijo shows Ambrym's volcanic ash against a deep ocean. As the Munich bones, which emerge from Santo, the mage, who hovers over Ambrym, is more reminiscent of the tradition of European rather than ni-Vanuatu music.
However, Cujo adjusts the pictorial language of Europe to his Vanuatu theme. Its sorcerer is part of Ambrym, an isle known for its magical powers. When Breton and the Surrealists used the Melanese pictorial language for the public in Europe, Cujo follows the requirements of his Melanese theme in his work.
Ol Map Blong Vanuatu with Christopher Jerry, who took me by cab around the Isle of Efate. This is the name of Nguna, his home isle, which sits in the ocean just south of Efate. I could see Nguna in the far and had no problems to identify his wavy feet and his lowered face.
It was Jerry who took a close look at all of Patrice Cujo's works, but he was particularly interested in the Maewo and Pentecost isles. "A few years ago, a track called'Gel Pentecost' was a big success for one of Vanuatu's strings. It is the tale of a "man Vila" who is still in sweet embrace of a younger lady who immigrated to his town.
Gel Pentecost" is set on the stretch between the main town, Vanuatu, with its pubs and casinos, luxurious boats and slums, and the outskirts of the game. Here, however, most of the food is grown in small towns and islets. The Pentecost chieftain Viraleo Boborenvanua has recently come to symbolize the difference between Port Vila and the more remote Vanuatu isles.
The Turaga, who are living on the eastern Pentecostal coastline and one of Vanuatu speaking about one hundred and thirty tribal tongues, are led by Ch. Viraleo. He and his men were sent to Port Vila, where they astounded the natives by performing in front of the courts only in the sparse costume of their isle.
He was accused of contempt for the court who heard his case, then fired on deposit in Port Vila and asked to find a solicitor and a lawsuit. Chieftain Viraleo is as opposed to Vanuatu as he is to city attire. As Jimmy Stevens before him, he believes that his leadership and expertise in ni-Vanuatu kamtom surpasses that of any politicians or officials in Port Vila.
Although he lived in exiles in the capitol, he recently proclaimed the separation of the "Turaga nation" from Vanuatu. However, the conflicts between Chief Viraleo and his neighbors show how splits can arise within and between the Melanesian isles. Occidental commentators tend to attribute a shared sense of belonging to the residents of inhabited archipelagos that contain many nations and tongues.
In the 1990', when a Bougainville Sectionist coalition fought the Papuan forces, many commentators spoke of a people that agreed in their wish to drive out the Port Moresbyists. Bougainville, as elsewhere in Melanesia, is a place where the demands of religious, ethnic, linguistic and classmates can share the same people.
The pictures of Patrice Cujo oppose the equating of islands and identities. Frequently they show more than one of the islands and sometimes whole archipelago, like the Torres group in the far northern part of Vanuatu and the shepherds in the city. That'?s Melanesia.