ART ON VIEW FIG. 5 (above): Back view of fi g. 4 showing carved “hinge.” Fiji Museum, inv. 53.17. 106 Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, 15 October 2016 to 12 February 2017) and of the accompanying catalog is to challenge some of these assumptions by examining closely, from art-historical and anthropological perspectives, a range of nineteenth-century Fijian artworks that have survived in museums and collections. What emerges is a picture of creative adaptability by highly skilled craftspeople resident in Fiji, a mix of populations deriving originally from islands to the west and others more recently from the east. Fiji has long been regarded as something of a crossroads in the Pacifi c, and it is likely that ever since people fi rst arrived there around 1000 BC—the so-called Lapita people—Fiji has been visited and colonized by successive migrations of people from what is now Vanuatu, and later from Tonga (and to a lesser extent Samoa), with whom there was more recent regular contact, kinship links, and dynastic ties. This mixture has caused a classifi catory problem, and even dispute, among Western scholars as to whether Fiji is in Melanesia or Polynesia and whether Fijians are Melanesian or Polynesian. This is of little concern to most Fijians, since to them these are alien categories. They are Pacifi c Islanders with relations with all sorts of neighbors, far and near. They are people of Oceania and, as highlighted by the Fiji-based Tongan scholar and writer Epeli Hau’ofa in an infl uential article of 1994 (“Our Sea of Islands”), many would prefer to be defi ned by that association rather than by a system devised by a French naval offi cer (Dumont d’Urville) in the early 1830s. As a result of these population movements, Fiji has a complex historical and cultural background which appears to have led to the development of a facility to absorb, adapt, and innovate while at the same time retain cultural distinctiveness. Oral traditions about the origins of Fijian society refer frequently to the arrival of vulagi (foreigners) who become absorbed through intermarriage with people of the land. Whatever ideas and techniques foreigners brought in were domesticated and adapted into a Fijian version, and this pattern continued when dealing with Europeans with their metal, their guns, and their Christianity. Existing Fijian art forms were affected by the arrival of metal tools, both in terms of increased speed of production and possibilities for innovation, and as an example I will highlight one area of art production for which the fi rst half of the nineteenth century was a period of dynamic creativity. Things long regarded as “traditional” tribal objects were in fact innovations of this period, created in response to changing circumstances and new possibilities. The objects in question are usually referred to as “ornaments,” though this term does not do justice to the full signifi cance of these beautiful creations in whale ivory and pearl shell. I would also like to stress that many if not most Fijian objects were “made for trade,” even in solely indigenous contexts, and that objects could have multiple uses and signifi cances in addition to their more obvious uses as a breastplate, a kava bowl, or a war club. They were seldom used by their makers and were distributed via exchange networks from FIG. 6 (right): Composite breastplate, civa vonovono, of whale ivory and pearl shell. Fiji. Early 19th century. Sperm whale ivory, pearl shell. W: 23.5 cm. Wishart-Ryan Collection; ex Turner Collection. Fiji Museum, inv. 83.133WR. One of several very fi nely made breastplates with similar form and construction but with variations in inlay design. Probably the work of an individual master or workshop, 1830s–1840s.
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