The West Papua Women’s Office in Docklands is asking Visual, Sculpture, Jewellery and Craft Artists to consider entering work in the 2017 SAMPARI ART EXHIBITION FOR WEST PAPUA, including the special category of Melanesian Art.

The exhibition is showing in the Australian Catholic University Art Gallery in Fitzroy (Melbourne) between 8 and 17 December 2017.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE
Friday 20 October 2017

Sampari 2015 and 2016 attracted fine art, glass work, collage, print, wirework, photography, film, traditional weaving, mixed media, street sculpture, oil gouache and ink.

Works need to be inspired by West Papua: by the people, their culture, politics, history, or extraordinary flora and fauna and maritime and territorial environments.

• There is no submission fee.
• Submissions must include a photograph of your completed work.
• Artworks will be on sale to the viewing public unless otherwise specified by artist.
• Proceeds of sales are shared 50/50 between Artist and the FRWP Women’s Office.

West Papua, brutally occupied by Indonesia since 1 May 1963, is a bounteous space of inspiration and paradox.  It’s a territory of extraordinary physical beauty (being plundered).  An ancient landmass of complex geologies (being exploited).  A living museum of rare flora and fauna (sold in black markets across Java).  The home of an indigenous people with footprints across ancient time and space.

The West Papuans are Australia’s closest neighbour. Their ambition is to be a free and independent Melanesian state.  The engagement of western and melanesian artists is crucial as they approach a dangerous climax in their long freedom struggle.

PDF Submission Form Sampari 2017, Submission form
INQUIRIES frwpwomensoffice.sampari@gmail.com or Robin Vote on 0413 802 612

Take a look at the 2016 Sampari Art Exhibits
View some of the 2015 Sampari Art Exhibits

MELANESIAN WALL OF ART

Sampari 2017 is again featuring artists from the Melanesian nations. Solomon Islanders, ni-Vanuatu, Papua New Guineans, Fijians, and the Kanak of New Caledonia (who are preparing for an independence referendum in 2018) have a unique perspective on West Papua.  They see a war zone where brown-skinned people with frizzy hair like themselves are murdered for raising a flag.  They see a kin state bursting with songsters and poets and imaginative resistance to Indonesia’s genocidal policies.  They see tiny isolated villages struggling to survive within a militarized colonial space.  They see unique flora and fauna stifling in the shadow of the biggest gold-and-copper mine in the world.  Their solidarity strong-arms their politicians for the monumental battle of relisting West Papua on the UN Decolonisation List.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE
Friday 20 October 2017

• Entries are restricted to Melanesian artists living outside Australia
• Email A4 scans of your artwork to melanesia.sampari@gmail.com
• The A4 scan needs to be set at 720dpi to ensure printing quality
• Artwork that can’t be scanned (eg sculpture) to be photographed and then emailed to melanesia.sampari@gmail.com

PDF Submission Form Melanesian Art, Submission Form
INQUIRIES melanesia.sampari@gmail.com or Robin Vote on 0413 802 612
Take a look at the 2016 Melanesian Wall of Art

SAMPARI FORUMS AND EVENTS IN THE GALLERY

FRWP Women’s Office is again hosting a series of forums in the gallery during the Sampari Exhibition. The forums increase the audience for the visual arts exhibited, and provide space for the exposure of other artists like Poets, Songsters, Musicians, Writers, Activists and Intellectuals.

Opening, Sampari Art Exhibition & Sale for West Papua
Friday, 8 December, 6pm

Christmas Party, West Papua Rent Collective
Saturday 9 December, 1-4pm

Launch, Exhibition, World War Two West Papua
Sunday 10 December, 1.30-3pm

Debate: Should Australia support West Papua’s independence?
Wednesday 13 December, 6-8pm

The Venus Forum: Stories of the Morning Star
Thursday 14 December, 6-9pm

Spoken Word for West Papua
Friday 16 December, 6-8pm

Melanesian Culture Day
Saturday 16 December, 1-4pm

INFORMATION TO INSPIRE ARTISTS

[click to enlarge and read]

Federal Republic of West Papua, 211, 838 Collins St, Docklands 3008, Victoria
0420 250 389; www.dfait.federalrepublicofwestpapua.org; frwpwomensoffice.sampari@gmail.com

My highland warrior is seen through the telescopic sights of a rifle, his head surrounded by the leaves of his homeland, which also reference organisations that ignore the atrocities committed against these owners of the land [EMMA THURLOW, CATALOGUE]

PNG born Emma Thurlow won the People’s Choice Award at the 2016 Sampari Art Exhibition and Sale for West Papua with a striking portrait printed on a round plate of wood to highlight the artist’s concern for the ancient forests of her homeland that continue to be logged at unsustainable rates.  West Papuan warrior is seen through the telescopic sights of a rifle, his head surrounded by a half-wreath of leaves, some green, others brown, and red, which the artist employs to call in West Papuans deep and enduring commitment to their land even in the face of Indonesia’s genocidal policies and the world’s indifference to their status as a ‘dwindling minority’ population.  Thurlow’s work began with an image of a Papuan highlander by Russian photographer, Andrey Gudkov.  The rest of her computer-vector illustration was drawn with a wacom tablet. The eco-conscious artist mounted her work on a small round plate of wood to highlight her concern for the ancient forests of her homeland that continue to be logged at unsustainable rates.

West Papua warrior was one of forty works in the kaleidoscopic purview of West Papua hosted by the Federal Republic of West Papua in the Australian Catholic University Art Gallery in Melbourne in December 2016.  The exhibition was directed by Bronwen Bender and Hana Vasak, and opened by ACU Associate Vice-Chancellor Dr John Ballard who stressed the role of artists and universities in sparking social change and prosecuting political progress.  Nina Rubinstein’s ARTWAY FRAMES sponsored the People’s Choice Award with a $100 voucher.

The FRWP Womens Office is extremely grateful to Artway Frames, and to the other sponsors, namely the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne), Bendigo Bank (Clifton Hill), Moon Dog Craft Brewery (Abbotsford), Total Print Solutions (Footscray), Taking off Tours Travel Agency (Melbourne), Image United Photography (Prahran) and Konpira Maru Wines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FROM THE CATALOGUE  The Sampari Art Exhibition strives to engage Australians in a conversation about the culture and recent history of West Papua in order to secure a more humane future for its peoples.  Works reference traditional cultural forms, symbols of strength, resilience and freedom, as well as the social and political aspirations of present-day West Papuans (RUTH McDOUGALL)

TOMMY LATUPEIRISSA‘s extraordinary vase of Melanesian flags focussed the exhibition around the West Papuans long-term political ambition to be known and recognised as a Melanesian state not an Asian colony.  Tommy was born in Maluku, the ‘spice’ island archipelago that shadows West Papua.  He has spent years encouraging Pacific Islanders to identify and reclaim Melanesia’s western border which includes his own homeland.

SAMPARI 2017 attracted an impressive array of international entries, including works from the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, West Papua, America and the Netherlands.  Below are thumbnails of the works, half of which sold during the exhibition. (Separate web page for the Melanesian entries at ).

HUMPHREY KING’s enigmatic In the rubble of divinities was bought by Dr John Ballard for his office in the Australian Catholic University.  The work was entered by Identity Transduction Systems (ITS) an art collective in New York that makes politically motivated art in support of basic human rights …. “we believe in art by any means and strive to do work that’s visceral, bold and immediate … hoping to broaden the scope of what can be politically useful art.”

JAIR PATTIPEILOHY is from the Netherlands, although his arrestingly beautiful photo-portraits evoke his Moluccan heritage.  (The Moluccan archipelago shadows the coast of West Papua).  Cultural transmission features Frank Berhitu, from Maluku but born in The Netherlands, teaching his grandson Asmara to play the tiha (drum) in the time-honoured tradition of transmitting knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material orally from one generation to the next.

Identity features Nel Tutupoly and Sigal Likumahuwa with Sempe sempe (the traditional pottery of Ouw village in Saparua Island).  ‘Identity’ is from a photo series of Moluccan women in Holland that culminated in an exhibition Hier sta ik – Molukse vrouwen in Nederland (Here I am – Moluccan women in the Netherlands).  The Netherland’s distinctive Moluccan community are the families of soldiers in the Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) who were transported to Holland in 1951 after the newly independent Indonesian Republic refused to employ them.  Others are descendents of Moluccans in West Papua who left after the Indonesian occupation in 1962.

FROM THE CATALOGUE … On 1 December 2015, a group of West Papuan and Australian activists set up a vigil outside the Indonesian Consulate in Melbourne to commemorate the first official raising of the Morning Star flag in Netherlands New Guinea.  Hundreds of Papuan students had been arrested in Jogjakarta (Java) and shootings in Yapen Island (West Papua) had claimed the lives of four.  Timber, straw, bark and rope were lashed together to erect the iconic circular form of the honai, the traditional home of the Dani peoples of the Central Highlands.  The round steep-roofed honai holds in the warmth and encourages rain run-off, but constructed thousands of miles away on a blistering summer day in Australia, this icon of ingenuity and environmental understanding was a very different type of shelter.  Referencing the famous Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the Melbourne honai has become the symbolic home of displaced West Papuans.  The model Lobar Wainggai created for the Sampari Art Exhibition mobilises the importance of the architectural form as well as the honai‘s new symbolic and political role for West Papuans in the diaspora.  Lobar is one of forty-three West Papuans who in 2006 made the dangerous canoe crossing from Merauke to Cape York Peninsula seeking refuge from persecution (RUTH McDOUGALL)

Helen Andres’ Yarra Dreaming features Babuan Mirino and her grand-daughter on the banks of the Yarra River in Docklands near the Federal Republic of West Papua office at 838 Collins St. Helen, who also works in the Lifestyle Working Building, believes the West Papua office is “a collective dream, or a collection of dreams, endeavouring to provide a basis to make their dreams a reality … freedom for West Papua and its people to live their own lives.” The five-star-energy office is supported by the WEST PAPUA RENT COLLECTIVE, a unique galaxy of Australians investing in Australia’s nearest neighbour during its transition from Indonesian colony to independent Melanesian state.

These photographs were taken in the seas off Darwin during the West Papua Freedom Forum in 2015, when activists on the Pog protested against a military exercise by Australia, United States, New Zealand, and Japan that involved 30,000 soldiers, marines, sailors and flyers.  As the Pog circled the armada, the activists were warned to desist, but then, curiously, allowed to board the massive American warship (more on Freedom Flotilla resistance in 2013 and 2015 at https://freedomflotillawestpapua.org)

Blessed are the liberators is a lino-cut printed in red, white, and cobalt blue. Two of the three prints sold during the exhibition.  According to the artist, the image “was based on my dream about Louise Byrne from the West Papua Women’s Office, where a ring on her finger dramatically metapmorphosed into an elaborate gold head-dress. This spiritually symbolic sign encouraged her to persevere seeking justice when illegal Indonesian intelligence activities across Australia were at unprecedented levels of intensity”.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT … In 2013 my wife and I visited this magnificent tree in the East McDonnell Ranges out of Alice Springs, Central Australia.  We were truly filled with awe – it is a tree over 300 year old and measures 33 metres tall – and I knew I had to paint it. While it is popularly called a Ghost Gum the tree is technically Corymbia Papuana, originally named for the specimens of the tree found in the land of West Papua/Papua New Guinea which once shared an undivided land mass with north Australia.

The Morning Star flag is an emblem of resistance and celebrates the nationhood West Papuans claim and so far have been denied.  My painting morphs the Papuana tree into the star of the flag, reminding Australians of their linked geographical history, and a symbol of the responsibility of Australians to help resolve the injustice north of our shores.  I have included a distressed red-tailed black cockatoo, also indigenous to the area, alerting us with its cry.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT … These three revolutionary leaders have become symbols of nationalism in the Congo (Patrice Lamumba), Mexico (Emiliano Zapata) and West Papua (Theys Eluay).  All were assassinated for standing up for the rights of their people.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT … a representation of Muma Yosepha, one of the most highly regarded female independence advocates in West Papua.  Her life story is of relentless lobbying for justice, and protest against the Indonesian occupation and the overwhelming presence of the Indonesian military.

“Cutting and splicing images together, combining found images from secondhand books, creating an uncanny world where the sequence and division of time, space and memory are forgotten, leaving only the subject present within their surreal, dreamlike surroundings.  My work is influenced by a 2012 documentary of the same name about the West Papuans struggle for freedom from Indonesian colonial rule (Kubi Vasak).

FROM THE CATALOGUE … Kubi Vasak’s hauntingly beautiful collages of the Bird-of-paradise reference the importance of this bird as a sign of solidarity for Papuans.  These painstakingly detailed works also speak to a long history of economic exchange, reaching back over thousands of years to plumes gathered in Papua to be worn by the Kings of Nepal, Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, and warriors manning ships depicted on 2000 year-old Dong Son drums.  Histories of expansionist colonial occupation including the foreign appropriation of the West Papuans land and natural mineral resources continue to threaten the lives and wellbeing of the indigenous peoples of West Papua just as surely as the trade of plumes and destruction of natural habitat has that of the Bird of Paradise.  The Bird of Paradise has forty-two species and is found across West Papua, Papua new Guinea and Eastern Australia.  It seems particularly apt to have this motif in an exhibition of equally diverse and visually enticing works from across this same geography.  Nestled amongst strong works in many different media, Vasak’s ‘Forgotten Bird of Paradise 1 & 11’ reminds us here in Australia of our proximity and shared connections to the peoples of West Papua, inviting us to further engage in order to develop stronger understandings and support for their plight (RUTH McDOUGALL).

Skye Williams’ preferred medium of marker pens allows a speed of drafting that embraces ‘mistakes’ to inform the next mark.  Thus, stream of consciousness is sought for exploration of pattern work and creating colour contrast, while seeking the next figurative form to draw out.

The West Papuan flag with the red rising star glows in a morning sunrise.  The morning star reflects six white bands of light across the blue water.  Distinct West Papuan reef biodiversity is depicted underneath.  The banned West Papuan flag isn’t being hidden pictorially. This image speaks of embedded culture of people in a place, as represented by this nationalist symbol actually depicting the environment of West Papua” (SKYE WILLIAMS).

ALEJANDRO AGUANTA … I wanted to capture a moment of peace.  This strong yet calm native woman from West Papua represents hope and a tiny fire that burns bright amongst the dark struggles of the province.

A warrior woman from the PNG highlands stands in possession of her inner strength and in solidarity with her West Papuan sisters.  The simple majestry of the ‘bilas’ (traditional adornment) is a reflection of the fundamental right to dignity and autonomy of the people of West Papua [BUNNY CARVER].

“Ephemeral art as a metaphor for life applies generally to us all, but most specifically to West Papua.  West Papuans face dilemmas with ephemerality at many levels: the destruction of the natural environment; the transiency of an indigenous culture being lost to genocide, transmigration and exiling; the loss of political prisoners’ legacies of struggles and gains through the passage of time and inadequate records management.  The heights of their cycles are not always being captured, preserved, and the messages shared” (Barbara Tipper).

ARTIST’S STATEMENT … I honour and acknowledge the strength, resilience and faith of West Papuan freedom fighters and political prisoners past and present.  May they know they are not alone or abandoned but will live on as their stories are told and their legacies preserved and honoured through the arts.

The Ceremony for West Papuan martyrs and political prisoners was during the West Papua Rent Collective Christmas Party (see https://dfait.federalrepublicofwestpapua.net/west-papua-rent-collective-christmas-party/)

ARTIST’S STATEMENT … This splendid Palm Cockatoo is an emblem of West Papua and its unique culture and environment.  A symbol of the strength and uniqueness of West Papua and its people.

Cherry Piper is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores memory in connection with object and places. Her interest in nostalgia led her to explore macramé techniques of textile making combined with driftwood found on Australian beaches.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT … Freedom ties references the tradition of weaving and textile making which West Papuans continue to use to create practical and cultural objects. The macramé knots are loosely based on the natural curves of the landscape and suggest a pair of eyes like those found on war shields and masks.

ONA FILLOY has donated poster editions of her work to the West Papua Womens Office in Docklands.  Sales are supporting the West Papua Womens Congress in West Papua in 2017.

OUR SPONSORS

Federal Republic of West Papua sincerely thanks:

 

AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
Melbourne

 

 

BENDIGO BANK
Clifton Hill, Victoria

 

MOON DOG CRAFT BREWER
17 Duke St, Abbotsford, Victoria

 

 

 

 

ARTWAY FRAMES
St Kilda East, Victoria, tel 0425 718 020

 

 

TOTAL PRINT SOLUTIONS
203 Barkly St, Footscray, Victoria

 

TAKING OFF TOURS TRAVEL AGENCY
618 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne

 

IMAGE UNITED PHOTOGRAPHY
24 Macquarie St, Prahran Victoria

 

 

KONPIRA MARU WINES Made in Melbourne, true to variety and the ground in which they’re grown. Email konpiramaru.com.au. Available at Harvest Wines and Liquor (Northcote), Cult of the Vine (Brunswick), Milton Wine Shop (Malvern)

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THE 2016 SAMPARI ART EXHIBITION AND SALE FOR WEST PAPUA in the Australian Catholic University’s Art Gallery in Fitzroy in December 2016, hosted by the Federal Republic of West Papua’s office in Docklands, included a special WALL OF MELANESIAN PRINTS.  The vibrant works sent by artists from Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea projected kaleidoscopic views of Melanesian West Papua: as carriage of identifying tribal cultures, agents of social change, protector of complex ecologies, children battered by war, as contested political identity at the centre of regional affairs.

All the prints were bought during the exhibition.  Demand for several was heavy, requiring re-prints.  The exhibition is reproduced below, interspersed with excerpts (in italics) from an essay by Sydney arts critic ELLA MUDIE, and with text that traces the renaissance of Melanesian identity in West Papua in the 1980’s, its ride above Indonesia’s scarifying endeavours, its journeying to re-engage Pacific kin, and homecoming in 2015 when the MELANESIAN SPEARHEAD GROUP accepted West Papua’s application for membership.

FROM THE CATALOGUE … The Sampari Art Exhibition for West Papua is an expression of the solidarity many Australians feel for the plight of our West Papuan neighbours.  Further afield, an “agreement of feeling or action” that West Papua should be accorded the human right of self-determination unifies individuals across the Pacific.  While this sense of regional solidarity is shared by every artist contributing work to the exhibition, it is especially prevalent in the Melanesian wall of art established to celebrate the unique political support of artists and cultural producers from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Solomon Islands, for their Melanesian kin …

Whether artists can, or should wade into the arena of politics is a vexed question in the world of contemporary art.  Within the framework of neoliberal capitalism, debate frequently involves heated discussion over the recuperation of critique and protest.  In this environment of passionate disagreement over the role of the artist, the organisation of cultural events like Sampari along lines of solidarity, bringing together a diversity of artistic works in the name of a single cause – freedom for West Papua – provides an important outlet for expressing desire for change at a community level.

Contributions such as Monica Gunawan’s vivid painting of a Melanesian woman rebuking tribal traditions by raising her bow and arrow to hunt speak to the power of solidarity along gender lines.

This is especially poignant in ‘Hope’ an empathic portrait of a West Papuan woman in Indigenous headdress by a West Papuan photographer.  Solidarity with and between women acts as a subtle mode of resistance as it manifests not only in art but in everyday life, the realm wherein the personal becomes political and grassroots change often begins (ELLA MUDIE).

The Melanesian states were colonies when the United Nations gifted West Papua to Indonesia in 1962, and may have been unaware of the theft of 416,000 sq kms of Melanesian land and consequent slide of the Indonesian border from Meridan 139E to Meridian 141E (Note 2).  A raft of name changes in West Papua helped mask the crime.  Nederlands Nieuw Guinia became Irian Barat (then Irian Jaya), Hollandia became Jayapura (victorious city), Mount Carstenz overlooking what would be the (US) Freeport gold-and-copper mine became Puncak Jaya (victorious mountain), Dirk Hartog Island became Pulau Yos Sudarso after an Indonesian Navy commander.  Little news escaped from the territory now categorised an Operational War Zone.  Journalists and academics were denied visas.  Subversion laws were exacted by a judiciary ruled by the military (which four years later slaughtered three million of its own citizens in Java and Bali).  Only the ni-Vanuatu, urged on by their first prime minister Walter Lini, remembered the orphaned Papuans.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Craft work is often characterised as apolitical in the discourse of western art.  Yet the exchange of art and craft objects in regions like Melanesia have long been implicated in complex political and social relations.  The inclusion of fibre arts in Sampari’s Melanesian wall of art, specifically the bags of the Tongoa-Shepherds Women’s Association in Vanuatu, are reminders of how the production and exchange of objects forge points of connection between Melanesian cultures.  For writers such as the late Epeli Hau‘ofa, recognising such connections provides a politically transformative corrective to the notion that Island cultures are somehow separated and isolated by the sea, pointing to how Pacific Islanders belong, rather, to an oceanic community based on voyaging.

West Papua’s assertion as a Melanesian state on 14 December 1988 was the initiative of Dr Thomas Wainggai, a senior public servant in Indonesia’s provincial administration with a law degree from Japan’s Okayama University and a PhD in Public Administration from Florida State University.  Wainggai’s studies outside his homeland convinced him that West Papuans needed to resist the Indonesian occupation through dialogue-based negotiation generated by ‘justice, peace and love’ and to develop a national political structure based on their cultures, geographies and histories.  He raised a flag in the name of WEST MELANESIA on 14 December 1988 and was immediately arrested and incarcerated.  Twelve months later eighty-eight academics from Cenderawasih University who had been developing and implementing the non-violent paradigm were also arrested and incarcerated.  However the seeds of a resistance and nation-making endeavour that looked to the east more than the west had already been cast and taken root.

Melanesians feel something that anthropologists call ’embodied kinship’ when they hear about West Papua.  KINSHIP RECOGNITION enacts long-established, reassuring, interconnecting patterns that are crucial to a human being’s sense of identity and security …. recalling a common history of origin and journeying across time and space, which in correlation with genetics, produces striking and inherently meaningful similarities.  The Netherlands colonial administration was sensitive to this and provided for Papuan pastors to participate in Protestant church conferences in the Pacific and students to study at the Fiji campus of the University of South Pacific.  After the establishment of the South Pacific Commission in 1947 (where the independence of the colonies was assumed even if discussion was curtailed to economic and social welfare) it sent Markus Kaisepo, a prominent bureaucrat from Biak-Numfoor, to the first meeting of the Commission’s indigenous leaders—an historic gathering in 1951 described by the Governor of Fiji (Sir Brian Freeston) as a Parliament of the South Pacific Peoples.  The Unitary Republic of Indonesia severed these rich veins of continuity and solidarity on 1 May 1963.

West Papuans lobbied the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) for fifteen years before the inter-government forum accepted their application to join in 2015. Papuans multiple nation-making processes, as much as Indonesia’s bribes and blocking tactics, retarded the project.  However, during an intense week-long Reconciliation and Unity Summit for West Papuan Leaders in Vanuatu in 2014 a United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) was elected from, and rendered accountable to, West Papua’s three key independence identities: Secretary-General Octo Mote and Executive Officer Jacob Rumbiak from Federal Republic of West Papua, Spokesman Benny Wenda from West Papua National Parliament; Leonie Tanggahma and Rex Rumakiek from West Papua National Coalition for Liberation.  The historic summit was generated by church and women’s organisations across Melanesia; sparked by the 2013 World Council of Churches Assembly in South Korea; supported by West Papua’s Gereja Kristen Injili (GKI) Church; sponsored by the Vanuatu Government and Pacific Conference of Churches; and mediated by the Vanuatu Christian Council and Malvatumauri National Council of Chiefs.

Solidarity is a powerfully loaded term.  Deriving from nineteenth-century French, the word describes a “unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest.”  It is a notion that stirs, binds, and resonates most strongly during moments or events of crisis.  Since taking temporary control of West Papua in 1963, and following the consolidation of its unlawful rule through the UN-sanctioned and now discredited Act of Free Choice 1969 ballot, Indonesia’s brutal occupation of West Papua has been responded to with complex lines of solidarity and resistance, as well as complicity, among the diverse nations and cultures of the Asia-Pacific region.

Humour and satire is another means through which solidarity is expressed as in Campion Ohasio’s cartoon ‘Heroes or Traitors of West Papua’.  First published in the Solomon Islands newspaper The Island Sun in 2015 on the day the leaders of the Melanesian Spearhead Group met in Honiara to vote on West Papua’s membership, Ohasio’s drawing depicts a man flailing in the sea.  With the West Papua morning star flag in one hand, he reaches out to the MSG leaders seated in a canoe to raise him from the clutches of the great white shark of Indonesia.  This liberty to express a strong point of view through satirical humour without threat or fear of retribution, no matter how provocative the message, is one of the hallmarks of a free society and a point of solidarity that unites artists across cultures.

That West Papua’s right to independence and self-determination was recognised by the Melanesian Spearhead Group in 2015 can be attributed to a coalition of political, religious, academic and civic leaders from the Solomon Islands, a tiny archipelago of half-a-million Melanesians (Note 3).  Prime Minister (and MSG Chair) Manessah Sogavare, assisted by Peter Forau (Director-General, MSG Secretariat 2011-2015) and Emele Duituturaga (Director, Pacific Islands Association of Non-Government Organizations), leap-frogged the MSG’s more compromised states (Papua New Guinea and Fiji) with the support of Polynesian and Micronesian leaders from the Pacific Islands Forum (Note 4).  As the Pacific Coalition for West Papua based in Hawai’i University and advised by Solomon Island Professor Tarcicius Kabutaulaka, they lobbied the 2016 United Nations General Assembly to reinsert West Papua on the UN Decolonisation List—from which it was removed in 1969 after the New York Agreement’s fraudulent Act of Free Choice (Note 5).

Today, Indonesia continues to solicit geopolitical support for its territorial claim to West Papua with its charge of non-interference and the assertion that the sovereignty of nations should be respected.  Citing the national interest, the Australian government turns a blind eye to the Indonesian military’s violations of human rights in the name of unwavering solidarity with its regional ally.

However, the feeling of solidarity that events like the Sampari Art Exhibition convey for West Papuans reveal that beneath the official rhetoric of governments that nothing can be done, there simmers a deep sympathy and passionate desire for justice among ordinary citizens that seeks an outlet in real and meaningful action.

 

NOTES

1. Click for PDF of ‘Solidarity and Art, Ella Mudie, Catalogue, 2016 Sampari Art Exhibition for West Papua Sampari, Art and solidarity, Essay, Exhibition Catalogue

“My father’s a painter so I grew up with art and the smell of oils. First and foremost though I’ve always been a big reader, which led me to enrol in a BA at the University of Sydney where I majored in English and wrote an honours thesis on the maverick boy poet and hoaxer Thomas Chatterton. I also took some postgraduate studies in journalism and found my niche in print features and arts writing, leading to features for The Age and other newspapers, and articles and essays in magazines and journals including Meanjin and the Griffith Review (http://www.ellamudie.com/).

 

2. MERIDIAN 139 cuts through the Ceram Sea on the west coast of Misool Island (one of the four major islands of West Papua’s Raja Ampat Island Group).  MERIDIAN 141 divides the island of New Guinea.  For more see Frank Jacobs, author of Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities, in ‘Who bit my border?’ New York Times, 13 March 2012 [https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/who-bit-my-border/?_r=0].

3.  The Melanesian Spearhead Group was formed in July 1986 during a meeting of Heads of Government of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, as well as the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), who agreed to work together in spearheading regional issues including the Kanak’s struggle in New Caledonia for independence from France.  On 14 March 1988, PNG Prime Minister Paias Wingti, Vanuatu Prime Minister Walter Lini, and Solomon Islands Foreign Affairs Minister Ezekiel Alebua signed the ‘Principles of Cooperation Among the Independent States in Melanesia’.  FLNKS formally joined the MSG in 1989. Fiji joined in 1996.  The MSG’s Secretariat’s office in Port Vila, constructed by People’s Republic of China, opened on 30 May 2008.

4.  The Pacific Islands Forum is a political grouping of fourteen Melanesian, Micronesian and Polynesian independent and self-governing states, as well as Australia and New Zealand (that is, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Fiji; Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Palau, Nauru; Cook Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Niue, Samoa).  In 2015 the Forum accepted West Papua’s application for membership subject to a PIF Fact-finding Mission to West Papua, which Indonesia subsequently rejected.

5.  Speakers to the 2016 UNGA were Prime Minister Sogavare (Solomon Islands)  Prime Minister Salawi (Vanuatu)  Prime Minister Pohiva (Tonga)  President Hilda Heine (Federated States of Micronesia)  Prime Minister Sopoaga (Tuvalu)  President Divavesi Waqa (Nauru)  Dr Caleb Otto (UN Representative, Republic of Palau).

 

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SAMPARI 2016 ART EXHIBITION AND PUBLIC PROGRAMS

ACU Art Gallery, 26 Brunswick St, Fitzroy
OPENS  Friday 2 December 2016 : 6pm
CLOSES  Sunday 11 December 2016 : 5pm

GALLERY HOURS:
Monday-Wednesday 11-6pm
Thursday-Friday 11-8pm
Saturday-Sunday 10-4pm

SAMPARI, the name of the morning star in the Biak Island language, is an art exhibition and series of events that celebrate West Papuan cultures and explores the nation’s environment, ecology, politics and history.  The main aim of the exhibition is to raise awareness of the West Papuan peoples wish for independence and right to self-determination.

Jaïr Pattipeilohy’s arresting photograph Cultural transmission (above) is one of thirty-six works exhibited by artists from The Netherlands, America, and Australia, as well as the Melanesian nations of West Papua, Maluku, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea. As well as photography, the works include oil on Belgian linen, oil and acrylic on canvas, archival marker on paper, ink, lino cut print, one computer vector illustration on wood, etch, collage, terra cotta base releif, raw natural objects, macrame, digital art and photography.

DR JOHN BALLARD, Associate Vice-Chancellor (Melbourne) of the Australia Catholic University opened the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF WEST PAPUA’S second art exhibition in the ACU Art Gallery on 2 December 2016.  The popular chief explained how the spectacular artworks assembled in his university’s spacious urban gallery will boost the psychological and physical health of a people who have endured a debilitating racist occupation for more than half-a-century.

Art Exhibition Catalogue (PDF, for printing) sampari-2016-catalogue

Sampari 2016 includes an exhibition of twenty-eight historical cartoons published after the arrival of 43 West Papuan asylum seekers in 2006. The asylum seekers had beached their double-outrigger canoe at Mapoon on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula on 17 January 2006 with a banner stretched across their prahru SAVE WEST PAPUA PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE.  Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone believed their claims and issued them protection visas, sparking outrage in Indonesia and a bluster of appeasing strategies and contradictory policies in Australia.  President Yudhoyono withdrew his ambassador. Prime Minister Howard tried to excise Australia from ‘designated unauthorised arrivals’ (refugees). It took the prickly neighbours ten months to find a truce, and only then within a formal agreement (The Lombok Treaty) that outlawed the West Papuans’ Morning Star flag in both countries!

The realpolitik behind the Lombok Treaty was artfully captured by cartoonist John Spooner (The things you see by a green light The Age, 9 November 2006).  By the time it was signed, ten months after the asylum seekers had landed, twenty-eight other cartoons had been published in the mainstream media, all megaphoning the deep chasm between the Australian peoples’ concerns and opinions and how their politicians were legislating their concerns and opinions.

The most controversial cartoon was BILL LEAK’s, of President Yudhoyono in the guise of a dog mounting a West Papuan; a rejoinder to Indonesia’s FONDA LAPOD’s drawing of Prime Minister Howard and Foreign Minister Downer as copulating dingoes.  However, all the cartoonists—Zanetti, Campbell, Pope, Sharpe, Nicholson, Scott, Spooner, Davidson, Kudelka, Dyson, Knight, Ditchburn, Pryor—skillfully captured the capacity of occupied West Papua to expose the enduringly dysfunctional state of relations between Australia and Indonesia.

Cartoon Exhibition Catalogue (PDF, for printing) cartoon-catalogue

SAMPARI 2016 PUBLIC PROGRAMS

A SERIES OF EVENTS IN THE GALLERY DURING THE EXHIBITION FOR POETS, SONGSTERS, MUSICIANS, WRITERS, ACTIVISTS AND INTELLECTUALS TO DISCUSS AND DEBATE ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH WEST PAPUA’S INDEPENDENCE AND SELF-DETERMINATION.

ForthSpeak at SAMPARI
‘Saluting Melanesia’ Culture Day
Debate: Should West Papua be Independent?
Film: Land of the Morning Star by Mark Worth
Pacific views on climate change and environmental destruction
West Papua Open Day

ForthSpeak at SAMPARI

SATURDAY 3 DECEMBER 2016 : 2 – 4pm
MELBOURNE IS A CITY OF POETS AND POETRY and we even have a ‘Melbourne Poets Union‘. A host of these precious scribes is assembling in the ACU Art Gallery on 3 December to twist their prodigious talent around West Papua liberation.  Kylie Supski will be there.  Last year she penned a poetic response to Jacob Rumbiak’s Letter to West Papua’s Heroes and Heroines, then baptised ‘the twins’ at the Dan O’Connell Hotel on 9 January 2016.  So will Tim Hoffmann from the West Papua Rent Collective. And Laura Brinson, ReVerse Butcher, Andy Jackson, Chalise van Wungaart, Mary Chydiriotis.  Also Brendan Bosnack who must have written “for whom did you chisel that line in the sea, one side for the drowning, one side for the free” with our Indonesian-occupied territory in mind.

Saluting Melanesia, A Culture Day

SUNDAY 4 DECEMBER 2016: 1pm
SALUTING MELANESIA celebrates the courageous decision in 2015 by Solomon Islanders, ni-Vanuatu, and the Kanak of New Caledonia to champion West Papua’s entry into the Melanesian Spearhead Group and Pacific Islands Forum.  The islanders have continued carrying their kin’s political burden in 2016 within a PACIFIC COALITION FOR WEST PAPUA that is tasked to reinsert West Papua on the United Nations Decolonization List. The UN Secretariat removed West Papua from the list in 1969 after the Act of free choice and despite fundamental structural flaws in this so-called  ‘referendum’.  It was Dr Tom Wainggai’s revolutionary vision of his homeland as ‘the western border of Melanesia, stolen by Indonesia in 1962′ that revitalised West Papuans historic sense of self and orientated the peoples struggle towards its kin and cultural heartland in Melanesia-Pacific.

When our island people meet someone from the highlands, we barapen (feast).  We cook pig—the feast-food of the mountain people, and vegetables, and fish—which is more usually part of the island diet.  Sharing customs, eating together, that’s our polite form (Jacob Rumbiak, West Papua freedom fighter)

DAPUR SAMPARI (West Papua kitchen) is cooking and sharing food with Melanesian kin in the ACU Art Gallery on 4 December. The Melanesian seed-to-plate custom has its own historical story, beginning 7000—9000 years ago when Papuans domesticated the wild ancestors of sugarcane, hibiscus spinach, highland pitpit, pandanus, taro, banana, and numerous other species.  At this time, at the end of the last Ice Age, they also perfected a drainage method that enabled them to control water and regulate soil moisture.  With the arrival of the Austronesian speakers 3,500 years ago, pig husbandry techniques were developed.

Debate: Should West Papua be Independent?

THURSDAY, 8 DECEMBER: 6 – 8PM 

This debate, surrounded by the SAMPARI ART EXHIBITION FOR WEST PAPUA, is a space for leading representatives of the millennial generation to express their views about the long-standing sovereignty dispute over West Papua. Footscray trio LUNAR FLARES opens the event with a sonic exposition of the key themes of the debate.

In 1962, the United Nations over-rode West Papuans right of self-determination, leaving 700,000 Melanesians misplaced and repressed inside an unstable Indonesian state. Such was their isolation that when they raised the independent FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF WEST PAPUA on 19 October 2011, only the Indonesian government (and its military) reacted. Academic Danilyn Rutherford believes “Outsiders have tended to view the West Papuans
as far too primitive to act as the mature, rights-bearing subjects of popular sovereignty that liberal thinkers place at the heart of the modern nation form” (Why Papua wants freedom: the third person in contemporary nationalism Public Culture Vol. 20, No. 2, 2008).

DEBATE MODERATOR Dr Jonathan Benney—President, Debating Association of Victoria
EXPERT PANEL Bishop Hilton Deakin (Patron, Australia West Papua Association-Melbourne); Lance Collins (Head of INTERFET Military Intelligence, East Timor 1999-2000); Jacob Rumbiak (Minister for Foreign Affairs, Immigration & Trade, Federal Republic of West Papua); Isaac Morin (Doctoral Dissertation, West Papua: Identity and Language, La Trobe University)

INQUIRIES Louise Byrne 0424745155, louisebyrne2016@hotmail.com; Robin Vote 0413802612, rbnvote2@gmail.com; frwpwomensoffice@gmail.com; www.dfait.federalrepublicofwestpapua.org
IMAGE young freedom fighter in west papua, with family permission
CARD DESIGN Jack Byrne, Australian National University, Canberra

Film: Land of the Morning Star by Mark Worth

FRIDAY 9 DECEMBER 2016 : 7pm
LAND OF THE MORNING STAR, written and directed by Mark Worth, is the most important and comprehensive historical documents about West Papua. This screening is a memorial tribute to Mark, who died mysteriously in a hotel room in Sentani (West Papua) forty-eight hours after the ABC announced the premiere screening of his masterwork. Guest speaker, Greg Barber MLC, Leader of the Victorian Greens, visited him in the hotel a few days before he died.

Mark was born on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea when it was an Australian naval base, and as a young boy witnessed the arrival of refugees from West Papua after the UN’s fraudulent Act of Free Choice in 1969. After studying at the Swinburne Film School in Melbourne, he pioneered the one-man style of guerilla filmmaking that by the time of his death in 2004 was commonly used by ABC and SBS current affairs programs.

“Mark managed to combine the sensitivity of a Beat poet, the angry energy of punk and an academic’s drive for historical accuracy. He was the best storyteller I have ever known, in a business where stories are real currency. In that regard he died a wealthy man. Wanpla Big Man tru.” (BEN BOHANE Australian photojournalist, author, and TV producer)
 
 
 

“Mark was more Papuan than even he realised and he landed, like a Martian, into the greyness of Melbourne, bursting with stories of other worlds. There was no art, no music, no political crisis that didn’t have a brilliant parallel in tribal Melanesia.

A generation of artists, journalists and filmmakers were drawn into the region through Mark.  He was a steam train and a lot of people wanted to get on board. I certainly did. He changed my life and I will miss him forever”. [MARK DAVIS Journalist and SBS Dateline presenter who studied with Mark Worth at Swinburne Film School]

Pacific views on climate change and environmental destruction

SATURDAY 10 DECEMBER 2016 : 2pm

Jacynta Fuamatu is the Melbourne representative for 350 Pacific, a climate change action group with strong regional partners that advocates for Pacific islanders. Wensi is concerned with forest destruction in West Papua and its global consequences. The forum also features a parade of designer Off2War’s wearable art made from recycled materials.

West Papua Rent Collective Open Day

SUNDAY 11 DECEMBER 2016 : 1-3pm

The WP CHRISTMAS PARTY is one of three OPEN DAYS where West Papua Rent Collective members meet, eat, learn, and catch up on West Papua’s political progress towards self-determination and independence. All friends of West Papua are welcome. Donations for the exquisite lunch by DAPUR SAMPARI (Papua Kitchen) very welcome. RSVP for catering: frwpwomensoffice@gmail.com; (03) 9049 9590

After lunch the Reverend Dr J.T. Hollis (Father Turi) from Christchurch Anglican Church in St Kilda leads a special ceremony for political prisoners around the moving artwork of Barbara Tipper whose EPHEMERAL is “a collection of found objects from the environment and nature crafted into a mindful arrangement which speaks to the notion of transience or ephemerality.”

WEST PAPUA RENT COLLECTIVE is a unique galaxy of Australians investing in West Papua’s future as an independent Melanesian state. Their $30/month ($360/annum) deposits pay the rent on the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF WEST PAPUA’s inspiring five-star-energy office on the Yarra River at 838 Collins St in Docklands (Victoria).

The Federal Republic of West Papua (FRWP) was established in 2011 by five thousand academics, church leaders and senior tribal leaders. It has both self-determination and resistance capabilities and operates in measured opposition to Indonesia’s administration. The FRWP’S DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, IMMIGRATION & TRADE opened in Docklands in June 2014 and is co-ordinated by Jacob Rumbiak, the only FRWP Executive living outside West Papua.  The FRWP WOMEN’S OFFICE led by Babuan Mirino and Natalie Adadikam opened six months later. Both departments are developing activism and bureaucracies within the guidelines of Self-determination, Sustainability, and Good Governance.

ONE PAGE SUMMARY OF SAMPARI ART EXHIBITION & EVENTS
pdf sampari-art-exhibition-for-west-papua-1-page-summary
word sampari-art-exhibition-for-west-papua-1-page-summary

SAMPARI SPONSORS  West Papua’s escalating profile in 2016, as distinct from ten years ago in 2006, has meant a healthy number of firms became interested in sponsoring the Sampari Exhibition.  Besides the AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY, this includes BENDIGO BANK, MOON DOG CRAFT BREWERY, ARTWAY FRAMES, TOTAL PRINT SOLUTIONS, TAKING OFF TOURS TRAVEL AGENCY, IMAGE UNITED PHOTOGRAPHY. The Federal Republic of West Papua sincerely thanks these captains of industry for their support.

frontpiece cartoon: Andrew Dyson Avoiding the real West Papua The Age, 15 May 2006
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The West Papua Women’s Office in Docklands is asking Visual, Media, Sculpture, Jewellery and Craft Artists to consider entering work in the 2017 SAMPARI ART EXHIBITION FOR WEST PAPUA.  This third exhibition is also in the Australian Catholic University Art Gallery in Fitzroy (Melbourne) between 8 and 17 December 2017.

Submission Deadline: Friday 20 October 2017

Submission Form below. Please note that submissions must include a photograph of your completed work.  There is no submission fee.  Artworks chosen will be on sale to the viewing public unless otherwise specified by artist.   Proceeds of sales are shared 50/50 between Artist and FRWP Women’s Office.

Sampari 2015 and 2016 attracted glass work, collage, print, wirework, photography, film, traditional weaving, mixed media, street sculpture, oil paintings.  The only pre-requisite is that work is inspired by West Papua: BY the people, their culture(s), their politics, their history, OR their extraordinary flora and fauna and maritime and territorial environments.

West Papua, brutally occupied by Indonesia since 1 May 1963, is a bounty of inspiration and paradox.  It’s a territory of extraordinary physical beauty (being plundered).  An ancient landmass of complex geologies (being exploited).  A living museum of rare flora and fauna (sold in black markets across Java).  The home of an indigenous people with footprints across ancient time and space.  The West Papuans are our closest neighbour. Their ambition is to be free and independent. The engagement of western and melanesian artists is crucial as they approach a dangerous climax in their long freedom struggle.

PDF Submission Form Sampari 2017, Submission form
INQUIRIES frwpwomensoffice.sampari@gmail.com or Robin Vote on 0413 802 612

MELANESIAN WALL OF ART

Sampari 2017 is again featuring artists from the Melanesian nations. This is to acknowledge their unique political support and leadership in the bitterly contested battle over West Papua’s inclusion in the Melanesian Spearhead Group and Pacific Island Forum.  Recognition by these regional fora is the first formal acknowledgement of West Papua’s independence movement since the beginning of the Indonesian occupation in 1963.  It heaved West Papuans’ self-determination ambitions onto the international stage, a quest now championed in the United Nations by a Pacific Coalition of Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian states.

Solomon Islanders, ni-Vanuatu, Papua New Guineans, Fijians, and the Kanak of New Caledonia (who are preparing for an independence referendum in 2018) have a unique perspective on West Papua.  They see a war zone where brown-skinned people with frizzy hair like themselves are murdered for raising a flag.  They see a kin state bursting with songsters and poets and imaginative resistance to Indonesia’s genocidal policies.  They see tiny isolated villages struggling to survive within a militarized colonial space.  They see unique flora and fauna stifling in the shadow of the biggest gold-and-copper mine in the world.  Their solidarity strong-arms their politicians for the monumental battle of relisting West Papua on the UN Decolonisation List.

INQUIRIES melanesia.sampari@gmail.com, or Robin Vote on 0413 802 612
Click to view 2016 Melanesian Wall of Art https://dfait.federalrepublicofwestpapua.net/melanesian-wall-of-art-2016-sampari-art-exhibition-sale-for-west-papua/

SAMPARI FORUMS AND EVENTS

In 2017, the FRWP Women’s Office is again hosting a series of Sampari Forums in the ACU Art Gallery during the exhibition. The forums increase the audience for the visual arts exhibited, and provide space for the exposure of other artists like Poets, Songsters, Musicians, Writers, Activists and Intellectuals (details announced in August 2017)

INFORMATION TO INSPIRE [click to enlarge and read]

FRWP WOMENS’ OFFICE
Federal Republic of West Papua, 211, 838 Collins St, Docklands 3008, Victoria
TEL (61 03) 90499590; www.dfait.federalrepublicofwestpapua.org; frwpwomensoffice.sampari@gmail.com

PETER WOODS won the People’s Choice Award at the Sampari Art Exhibition for West Papua. His Papuana Nymphaea is a gouache on watercolour paper that brings to light the suffering of the West Papuans in the setting of Monet’s famous Nymphaeas series of water lilies. The award was a Gift Voucher ($150) from FITZROY STRETCHES in Brunswick. (Photo: Peter Woods)

FROM THE CATALOGUE  This work comes from a current landscape series I have been doing as my response to spending two hours sketching in the gardens of Impressionist Claude Monet in Giverny, France. I have introduced the West Papuan suffering at the hands of the Indonesian state into the setting of Monet’s famous Nymphaes series  of the waterlilies in his famous garden ponds. The images in the pond of young Papuan people recently killed by Indonesian security forces seeks to deliberately disrupt the enjoyment of the garden’s aesthetic. It challenges the viewer to respond to this dissonance and reflect on how we in a free and democratic society can accept violent repression right next door to us, in our face. I also reference the ancient mythology  of the beautiful nymphs who were believed to live in ponds – hence the origin of the lily botanical name. In this garden view, however,  it is the beauty of Papuan youth that emerges from the waters, surfacing as ornamental dead witnesses making a mute appeal for justice to lovers, and painters, of pleasure gardens.

VAN T RUDD also won a People’s Choice Award with his sculpture Let rage, unity and love take form. The Award was a Gift Voucher of one frame donated by FRAMED BY YOU in Richmond.

FROM THE CATALOGUE The fight against the power of capital is global. When somebody resists state forces, they speak the language of a common goal: dignity and equality. Yet corrupt state forces are strong, and their ties with the world’s wealthiest bring immense power. This sculpture displays that fulcrum of opposing powers, and aims to gather and sling the arrows of justice for West Papua.

BRONWEN BENDER won a People’s Choice Award donated by GREAT FRAMES in Northcote with her wire-art portraits of four West Papuan (former) political prisoners.

FROM THE CATALOGUE: FACES OF FREEDOM

1) Jacob Rumbiak as a student, lecturer, culture man, and political prisoner helped inspire the generation of Indonesian students who brought down Suharto in 1998, and the West Papuan who are slowly but inevitably winning their independence. He escaped from Indonesia in 1999 to observe the referendum in East Timor, and from there was flown to Australia where he is widely recognised as a diplomat and a leading scholar on Indonesia and West Papua.

2) Muma Yusefa Alomang and husband Markus Kwalik, whose five children died from tailing sickness, have spent their lives fighting the landlessness, poverty, and disease in communities displaced by the Freeport Mine. Their tribe, the Amungme, have ancestral tenure over Nemangkawi, the site of the mine, and between 1977 and 1994 Muma Yusefa was incarcerated eighteen times, including in a cargo container of human faeces for a month. In 1999 she won the Yap Thiam Hien Human Rights Award, in 2001 the Goldman Environmental Prize, and in 2005 she was one of 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

3) Buchtar Tabuni was born into the Lani tribe of the Central Highlands. After studying engineering in Makassar (South Sulawesi) he returned to Jayapura and found the West Papua National Committee (KNPB) for independence. In 2008 he was incarcerated for three years, after being charged with treason for rallying support for the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (in London). In the notorious Abepura Prison he was continually tortured and beaten by the Indonesian military and refused hospital treatment.

4) Babuan Mirino was thirteen in 1962 when the United Nations gave her homeland to Indonesia. While raising her seven children she was midwife to hundreds of women who refused to go to government hospitals where the child and mother mortality rate is the highest in Indonesia. Her husband’s political activism eventually forced her to seek asylum and she is now the Convenor of the West Papua Women’s Office in Docklands.

SOME OTHER ARTWORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

PNG artist VICKI KINAI’s Perseverance and Endurance against the Odds (twisted tapa fibre, shells, pig tusk, bird, Emu feathers) is a hand-woven necklance designed and created in traditional Melanesian style to honour the women of West Papua. “They weave against the odds even when their tomorrow is bleak. They continue to persevere as mothers, wives, sisters, aunties and grandmothers of their loved ones whose lives have been lost in the fight for freedom.” (Photo: Tommy Latuepirissa)

Honai by LOBER WAINGGAI and GILIUS KOGOA. Honai is the home style in the highlands of West Papua, but this one was working outside the Indonesian Consulate in Queens Road on 1 and 2 December before moving 7 kms across town to the ACU Art Gallery in Fitzroy.

TOMMY LATUPEIRISSA has been photographing the indigenous peoples of the Pacific for years, at home, at play, and at their most dramatic in cultural festival and political rallies. He uses his photos to fortify the self-determination and independence ambitions of the Melanesian people of West Papua and their cultural cultural and political kin in Maluku.

Portrait of Jacob Rumbiak by DEAN GOLJA. “The artist’s intention for this portrait was to capture Jacob’s honesty and the result is this sincere and unpretentious photograph.”