Body of Work
I am 3055 and I am a continuum An extension of my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother My community and my nation for thousands of years I am not ashamed of my body If I am, I’m ashamed of my heritage My body is a nation It is
Ioane Ioane (2015)
Prologue Inside us the dead, like sweet-honeyed tamarind pods That will burst in tomorrow’s sun, or plankton fossils in coral alive at full moon dragging virile tides over coy reefs into yesterday’s lagoons.
1. Polynesians Inside me the dead woven into my flesh like the music of bone flutes: my polynesian fathers who escaped the sun’s wars, seeking these islands by prophetic stars
Albert Wendt, Inside Us The Dead (1976)
Trying to describe Ioane Ioane’s art practice succinctly is a bit like trying to grasp smoke as it swirls clearly towards you, and then dissipates into the air. It can be a rewarding and perplexing experience interviewing him. Over 20 years of sitting and talking, I have often come away with very clear and exciting ideas and essay plans in my head, and then reading over my notes later, struggled to capture the essence of our conversations. Words like magic and ritual are frequent, notes that allude to discussions about our children and parents, and memories that somehow seemed so relevant to our task He draws on and activates indigenous Pacific knowledge systems that look to the body and ancestral lineage as crucial narrators of history and being in the continuum. This fluid and contingent space, and the connection between the living body and the ancient, ancestral past resonates with the poetry of Albert Wendt and the performance choreography of Lemi Ponifasio.
