Contemporary artists have a unique place in Papua New Guinea history… they express what lies deep in our hearts, a longing to be new, yet rooted in our rich and ancient past. [1]

In the mid-1960s, when Australia moved to expedite national sovereignty for its territory Papua and New Guinea, eighty years of colonialism had done little to create sentiments of “nationness” in local peoples divided by regional politics, tribal loyalties, and cultural diversity. Confronting the task of nation-making following Independence in 1975, the state government swiftly initiated policies to further national integration among new citizens. As discussions surrounding postcolonial Papua New Guinean nation making have noted (Foster 1995, 2002; Otto and Thomas 1997; Zimmer-Tamakoshi 1998), it takes more than constructing schools, bridges, and roads to unite people and create sentiments of national consciousness and identity. It requires symbols and narratives of national life as well as a collective memory to materialize what Benedict Anderson (1983) calls an “imagined community” -one that depends on emotional attachments affecting what it means to be Papua New Guinea or a Papua New Guinean.

Given the diversity of its traditional societies and the impact of colonialism and globalization, PNG culture is subject to critical debate and negotiation - a process that necessitates integrating old and new life ways and evaluating national goals (Lindstrom 1998). If imagination plays a role in nation making, whose images have contributed to constructs of nationness? Scholars have proposed the agency of various media, including reading national newspapers (Anderson 1983), consuming national advertisements (Foster 1995, 2002), or viewing national TV, as these engage national life and raise national consciousness.

Yet beyond the powers of modern media to report national events and concerns, PNG leaders have recognized the agency of contemporary artists to create images of national culture and ancestral heritage. To promote this idea, Sir Michael Somare, the country’s first Prime Minister, sent a message to the first meeting of the Pacific Arts Association in 1974 urging recognition for the role of Papua New Guinea art in nation making and for respecting every artist’s work in creating “a vision of the cosmos as he/she envisions it.” (Somare 1979a, xv). In a similar way, constitutional lawyer and playwright Bernard Narokobi has called for supporting artistic vision because it expresses “the spirit” of Papua New Guinea and the search for “selfhood, nationalism, and identity” (Narokobi 1990, 17). As stated in his well-known book The Melanesian Way, artists should question: “What was Papua New Guinea? What is happening to Papua New Guinea? Where are we going?” [2]

To make these statements more than rhetoric, the national government acted before Independence to provide institutional support for the arts. Policies included introducing art education into the country’s four national high schools; opening technical colleges to teach contemporary design; and the establishment in 1973 of a Creative Arts Center in Port Moresby, the national capital. Renamed the National Arts School in 1976, the institution had a broad mission: to train artists in new media and technology; to fund exhibitions to sell artwork professionally; and to maintain a production workshop to make new art visible in national life. [3]

Given the value that Michael Somare and other civic leaders have placed on the importance of individual artistic vision in creating representations of PNG culture and identity, this chapter focuses on the work of contemporary painter and designer -Larry Santana. My discussion has two goals: to consider how Santana depicts images of national culture and identity, including the tensions he perceives in contemporary national life; and to comment on how Papua New Guineans and other viewers in the global art world have perceived and responded to Santana’s repertoire of work. Evaluating the responses of these audiences is instructive because, as Nelson Graburn (1976:24-26) has noted, national identity is a relational concept that engages internal collectivity while also displaying distinction to outsiders. In either case, national identity is contingent because it is a dynamic process that is subject to public debate.

To investigate these observations, I consider two aspects of Santana’s art. First, in what ways can his repertoire of images be interpreted as a narrative of Papua New Guinean life that engages questions about national identity and personhood? Second, as an artist participating in global art worlds (Becker 1982; Rosi 1998a; Venbrux et al. 2006), how successful has he been in marketing his work both at home and overseas and, if not, why not? While Santana is proud to be an artist who has had the opportunity to represent his country abroad, his career as a professional artist has been a struggle to survive as he confronted economic hardships, difficult family obligations, and increasing government indifference to supporting the arts as an integral aspect of national development. Consequently, expressions of personal frustration and criticism about the difficult conditions of contemporary life surface in his art encouraged by modern values of selfawareness.

Although a few scholars have begun to document contemporary PNG art as cultural expressions of Papua New Guinea’s modernizing culture, there has been little in-depth examination of individual artists leading this contemporary art movement. Drawing on longterm research, this chapter contributes a case study to an area of scholarship that invites further attention if key issues underlying the imagery and careers of contemporary PNG artists are to be better understood.

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Source: Article excerpt from: Pacific Island Artists: Navigating the Global Art World, Edited by Karen Stevenson