'Dear Culture Vulture'

This is one of three art works in ‘Dear Culture Vulture’ series by Luisa Tora and Molly Rangiwai-McHale.  The series responds to the appropriation of indigenous Pacific and Maori artforms and is an attempt to rework and reclaim cultural forms of celebration and protection.

According to a statement by the artists, the series “directly addresses non-Pacific and non-Maori art historians who claim expertise in the study of Pacific and Maori art forms, and further subjugate indigenous knowledge and practices by placing higher critical value on the appropriated cultural forms. It speaks pointedly to historians who call Pakeha appropriations of cultural motifs sophisticated, who claim that certain Maori artists have assumed their place in mainstream (see: Pakeha) art history because their work is stripped of the artist’s indigenous context, and who argue that by drawing indigenous collaborators from their shared religious group it makes the usurpation of cultural art techniques a form of religious practice”.

'Dear Culture Vulture'

According to the artists, “Dear Culture Vulture” is an “Open Letter to art historians who say Maori and Pacific cultural art forms are primitive, then call the same art forms sophisticated when Pakeha artists reproduce them: I see you. Stop it.This is a plastic pre-apocalyptic warning sign to Maori and Oceanic artists: Beware, _______, and _______, and _______, and _______. (Each skull is named after a particular art historian.) Dear Culture Vulture, this is a shark in your university office aquarium.”

Exhibition history

The ‘Dear Culture Vulture’ series was initially produced for the 6th Annual Tautai Tertiary exhibition, Close to Home. It was held at St. Paul’s Gallery at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, September 2013. The work was then exhibited at the Otara Window installation space in October 2013 as part of OTARAfest, a neighbourhood festival of arts and cultural events in and around Otara Town Centre that was part of Southside Arts Festival, in South Auckland, New Zealand.

Acquisition history

The “Dear Culture Vulture” series was acquired by Te Papa from the artists in 2014.

About the artists

Fijian native, Luisa Tora is a final year BA Creative Arts (Visual Arts) student at the Faculty of Creative Arts, Manukau Institute of Technology. She has a BA Journalism & History-Politics from the University of the South Pacific. She has exhibited in Fiji and New Zealand since 1998. She is a multi-disciplinary creative, an activist, and a writer.

Molly Rangiwai-McHale is of Maori, Chinese, Scottish, and Irish decent. She has a BA in Visual Arts from the University of Auckland. She is a multimedia artist and has exhibited her work in both group and solo shows.

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This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

Across the Pacific, cultural beliefs and values may be expressed through rituals, performance and what is worn, temporarily or permanently, on the body.1 Body adornment encompasses a diverse range of objects, from scarification and tatau (tattoo) to complex headdresses and necklaces. It can be used to decorate the body, to communicate information about the wearer and to symbolise status, wealth or identity for particular individuals or on specific occasions.

Dear Culture Vulture is part of a series of the same name that addresses the scholarship of Māori and Pacific art by non-indigenous art historians. The series uses adornment as a communicative medium to respond to the critical value placed on the appropriation of cultural motifs. Each artwork reinterprets specific forms of adornment, including breastplates, which project a sense of protection and security, and garlands, which are gifted and worn at celebrations.2 In this case, a reworked garland of bloody red skulls delivers a powerful warning.
The artists consider Dear Culture Vulture an open letter:

[addressing] art historians who say Māori and Pacific cultural art forms are primitive, then call the same art forms sophisticated when Pākehā artists reproduce them: I see you. Stop it. This is a plastic pre-apocalyptic warning sign to Māori and Oceanic artists: Beware, _______, and _______, and _______, and _______. (Each skull is named after a particular art historian.) Dear Culture Vulture, this is a shark in your university office aquarium.

As well as speaking pointedly to unnamed art historians, the artwork also addresses the general legacy of terms such as ‘primitivism’ which have historically been used to separate the supposed ‘high’ art of the West from non-Western art forms.3 As the artists imply, the use of terms like these has also encouraged acts of cultural appropriation by non-indigenous artists.

Nina Tonga

1 Pandora Fulimalo Pereira, ‘Identities adorned’, in Pandora Fulimalo Pereira and Sean Mallon (eds), Pacific art Niu Sila: The Pacific dimension of contemporary New Zealand arts, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2004, p. 39.

2 Luisa Tora, ‘Te Moana a nui a Kiwa: A sōlevu’, Garland, https://garlandmag.com/article/te-moana-nui-a-kiwa/#molly (accessed 19 January 2018).

3 Lucy Lippard, Mixed blessings: New art in a multicultural America, New York Press, New York, 1990, pp. 24–5.