Martin Morububuna, a leading artist in PNG since the 1970s, inherited his talent from his grandfather. Behind him is Fever of Milamala, in progress. (Photo: Dan Lepsoe)

 
Interview by Elaine Monds and Dan Lepsoe, 2009
 
EM: How have you developed as an artist?

MM: When I was small, I was given sopi, the responsibility to be an important artist¹, by my grandfather. I learned to carve by working with my uncles on canoe prows, yam houses, and other projects (I still make these when I go home). At the same time, I learned traditional stories and motifs. In elementary school, I was introduced to watercolours and coloured pencils, beginning my interest in the broader art world and other forms of expression. I was given the opportunity to attend the Creative Arts Centre (CAC) in 1974. It was great! There were no formal classes: we were just given materials and the freedom to do things the way we wanted. The results from that time are in the National Gallery of Australia. I learned a lot from my friends, too, and when they couldn’t teach me, nature gave me the ideas and strength to move on. For example, I’ve learned colour from nature, from watching leaves fade and flowers grow.

At the CAC, I read all the contemporary art books I could find, and was inspired by artists like Seurat, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Braque. At the same time, I encouraged myself to learn as much as I could from other areas of New Guinea: the Sepik, the Highlands, the Papuan region. I studied all of these things because I thought I needed them to move into the world and pursue my dream of always becoming more. The challenge of reconciling ideas from different cultures became a stronger drive than working only in the Trobriand style.

In 1992, I participated in an exhibition in Sydney that became a breakthrough for me. I’d experimented with cubist works, but this was my first commissioned show, and I was worried the audience wouldn’t respond well to my using a European style. But people were in love with the work, and as I stood there wondering why, I realized that the art was fundamentally Papua New Guinean! From then on, I’ve participated in cubism.

EM: What process do you go through to create a piece?

MM: I plan concepts and subject matter, then when I’m dreaming, I see visions of new things. I see canoe prow designs, for example, and paintings in full colour- just like in a camera. The next day, I can make them if I want to. That ability, which comes from being a man of sopi, helps me in all my work. It’s a God-given talent. Sometimes a piece can take me a year to complete, sometimes a day. The problem isn’t time. The hardest part is figuring out how to interpret legends or ideas from traditional lifestyles in terms that people will understand here and now. Which symbols are universal? How to reflect life inside and outside Papua New Guinea at the same time? Sometimes I use colours and lines to speak instead of realistically depicting a subject. If there is more to explain, I tend towards abstraction. The first impression might be simple, but there’s a lot in there, and I hope people can read it.

DL: You’ve been politically active throughout your life. What do you see as the relationship between art and politics?

MM: Some of my paintings are intended to inform politicians and businesspeople. Sometimes I compare government here with traditional government in the Trobriands. There, we live in peace and harmony. People don’t think of it as a dictatorship: it’s more of a communion. Everybody invests in the chief, with yams and pigs, then the wealth is systematically redistributed to the people. I compare this to the urban situation, with government corruption and politicians who seem to care only for themselves. We don’t have a high quality of life in the city.

If we start bringing all of our cultural backgrounds together to inform our judiciary and our politics, we’ll have a better society than if we focus on accumulating money. That process can be facilitated through the arts, but they need to have more support. A weakness of our government since independence has been that significant cultural initiatives have come from outside and haven’t been sustained when the responsibility has been ours. Another problem is that our officials don’t recognize the value of contemporary arts. They don’t see the connection to our cultures and traditions, thinking that old things and village lives are somehow more spiritual, more valuable. And yet, when they want to impress people from outside, they ask for our help, rounding us up from the street for an exhibition, then turning us out again afterwards without supporting further opportunities. Artists need to be involved in planning cultural policies and programs. If our roles as cultural leaders and ambassadors were recognized, we’d be able to do more for our country.

DL: You seem to believe that the arts serve an essential role in forging identity.

MM: That’s right. Many people are born here in the capital and never experience the possibilities of a traditional lifestyle at home. A couple of years ago, some high school students came to look at my work, and they were surprised to learn that all of the things I show happened in the Trobriands. I was surprised, too, that they didn’t know about them. I was lucky to grow up in the 60s and 70s, when these things were happening. I don’t want to go back to the old lifestyle, but as life changes, it’s important for individuals to understand where they’ve come from so they can make better decisions about where they want to go. That’s what tradition is all about.

When I arrived in Port Moresby, I found people coming from many other societies with different approaches and different languages, but they were affected by many of the same things. Our lives are not for us alone: our actions, our legends, our ideas, our traditions have meaning for other people too. In a sense, we all come from the Trobriand Islands. It’s important for my work to be shown because it makes connections, helping my community grow.

 

1. A “man of sopi”- see Carol Mayer’s Chasing a Dream: the Art of Martin Morububuna for more on this artistic inheritance. [↩]