The Jakarta Post
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Trisha Sertori, Contributor, Gianyar
Blue-throated cassowaries stride through emerald jungles, wallabies shuffle through leaf litter and birds of paradise call out across an ancient forest canopy and black rivers that
slither their way to the sea -this is the Papua of the imagination.
The land riding the edge of real and illusion is isolated and impenetrable. Even in the 21st century, much of its landscape is yet to feel the beat of human footsteps.
It is also a land where for more than 9,000 years the diverse people of Papua’s coastal and mountain regions have lived in harmony with the myths about their world’s beginnings and their family histories.
Until less than a century ago, the Kamoro of Papua’s South Central Coast on the Arafura Sea remembered the myths and ancestral histories. They were written in books made from the
timbers of their forests and in carvings that could be read over generations.
All that changed with the arrival of Dutch missionaries in the 1920s, says Kamoro cultural consultant, Kal Muller, who spoke with The Jakarta Post at the opening of the Kamoro Tribal Art Exhibition in Ubud earlier this week.
With the arrival of missionaries, he says, the Karomo’s carving tradition was relegated to history and made worthless. Missionaries of the 1920s had a Victorian sensibility making it
impossible for them to understand the artwork they saw, he says.
Furthermore, their religious fervor denounced the non-Christian worship focused in the carvings, he adds.
As a coastal population, Muller says, their traditions were more deeply impacted on by the societal and religious prejudices carried by the missionaries than remote groups such as the
Asmat, who were isolated from missionaries until the 1950s.
Asmat art is collected worldwide, Muller says. Their longer isolation from the West protected their carving traditions.
They also had a bizarre marketing coup with the disappearance of a Rockefeller son, he says.
“The initial boost to Asmat art was that a lot of people believe Asmat killed and ate Michael Rockefeller. He most probably drowned, but it makes a good story,” Muller says.
“That was one factor. The second very important factor was that Bishop Al Sowada promoted Asmat art in the teeth of Indonesian rejection of Asmat culture.”
Kamoro carving, on the other hand, withered and was at risk of extinction. The risk was identified and addressed by mining giant, Freeport.
The company has for the past decade funded Muller’s work with Kamoro communities rebuilding their carving traditions and introducing Kamoro art to the world.
Muller’s and Freeport’s support for the regeneration of Kamoro culture is paying off, and the artists and their communities are the beneficiaries. Every cent earned through art sales goes back to the artists with Freeport picking up exhibition, travel and shipping costs.
That financial support also keeps down the cost of the artworks, Muller says.
“Without Freeport this could not be done. Just shipping one drum from Jakarta to Singapore is more than the price of the drum.”
When that transport cost is extrapolated from the jungles of Papua, traveling exhibitions of the works become impossible and art sales become limited to the very wealthy, he says.
Kamoro artists are currently exhibiting carvings and women’s weavings at Toko-Toko Gallery on Jl. Sanggingan, Ubud, offering old and new collectors an opportunity to view the powerful art of the Kamoro and speak with the artists.
The number Kamoro art collectors is growing, according to Muller, who hopes that in the future Kamoro artworks will be appreciated similarly to Indigenous Australian art, which turns over millions of dollars annually. One Indigenous painting sold this year for half a million dollars at auction.
“In the future as collectors appreciate and develop their taste for Kamoro arts, I hope these artists’ works are appreciated on that scale. But it’s still a long way off,” Muller says.
Currently the strongest market for Kamoro carvings is within the Bali expatriate community, Muller adds. “I think that is because a lot of these expats have created and follow their own
lifestyle.
The composition of expats based in Bali is very different from that of Jakarta. Here they are a more independent bunch of people,” Muller says of Bali’s avant-garde art collectors who may well find themselves the unexpected keepers of Kamoro art treasures in the future.
For more information on the Kamoro Tribal Arts exhibition contact Toko-Toko Gallery in Jalan Sanggingan, Ubud, on 0361 975 374.
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