Madrid,
It occupies a third of the earth’s surface, it is tremendously rich in the environmental field and around its waters they have inhabited, and to a large extent they continue to do so, the plurally diverse peoples also in their languages. We refer to the Pacific Ocean, which from Spanish latitudes perhaps we usually associate with remote and isolated landscapes, still conceiving the seas as an excuse for distance and not for connection.
One of the most extensive art collections in the West is owned by the British Museum and, within the framework of the consolidated collaboration of this center with the “La Caixa” Foundation, which has already materialized in eight exhibitions, a part of its most interesting pieces can be seen, under the commissioner of Julie Adams, in CaixaForum Madrid.
“Voices of the Pacific. Innovation and tradition” seeks to approach us, not only to the knowledge of some keys of these oceanic cultures, whose relations with objects and with the natural environment offer learning and mysteries, but also to the ways of life of its inhabitants, present through photographs, videos and, precisely, particular voices.
Because of its extension and peculiarities, Australia has been outside the discourse of this exhibition, so the prominence has fallen to the small islands, understanding that historically the sea has not separated them, but has become the environment of its union.
Given their very very relationship with the surrounding nature, out of necessity and by virtue, the artists of these enclaves have worked with materials that were close to them: wood, stone, fibers, shells, fabrics … Taking the sea, often, as their source of inspiration. Navigation – in narrow dense canoes populated that ran through long journeys – explains the abundance of bowls, hooks, clubs, fans or models of those same vessels.
Those trips made the Pacific residents in early experts in long distances and, sometimes, in cosmopolitan authors capable of adapting their creations, in all the senses, to very changing circumstances.
In Caixaforum, ancestral pieces await us that they will refer to a particular understanding of the abode, objects or death, but also works by contemporary artists (approximately a quarter of the total) that constantly honor that collection using techniques such as textile art, size or the one that they consider a variant of that last activity: the tattoo, conceived as a tool for the self -definition. And they do it wherever they are, in the United States or in Europe, demonstrating that communication through new technologies can also serve to preserve traditions.
Those oceanic arts that, in the 16th century, aroused the attention of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers who for the first time crossing the North Pacific are analyzed in seven thematic sections, beginning with a selection of strong figures of human features with ritual uses.
The commissioner wanted to highlight among them a female who found himself in a ceremonial house in Papua New Guinea; Those that housed initiatory ceremonies for young men are understood by ceremonial houses. In them, hundreds of pieces like this have been found that alluded to specific spirits of those clans, in fact, the British museum acquired up to 159 in 1980.
The construction of these buildings declined after the consolidation of Christianity, but it has been partially recovering from the seventies.
We will also see here a moái representation Kavakavafrom Easter Island, where they had the sculptures of wood and stone as incarnations of their ancestors. This would be hung around the neck and, by marking the ribs, the skeletal body of a deceased relative probably would reproduce. Also rowing, an important belonging, as well as to use, also, in ceremonies; The residents of Buka forced to work in the plantations of Nueva Ireland took them with them.
If the trips nurtured the imaginary of the artists in the area, they also did not let the materials contributed by the Europeans who arrived here in the 16th century, such as wool, metal or glass.
Among the textile designs collected in this project, mostly halfway between the survival of traditions and innovation, a wedding suit is made approximate Siapo).
In these cultures, textiles were offered as a gift in births, weddings and deaths, and if they were especially valuable they were inherited from generation to generation. They usually left the hands of women, who taught their techniques to their daughters. Hats, fans, baskets and mats, well received by tourists, are still a means of survival for several families.
In these central chapters of the route linked to fashion, we will also surprise us a nineteenth -century armor made with coconut fiber, head -on.
Region very rich in dances (the Hula Hawaiian, the ´Ori of Tahiti or the Meke Fiyi is taught today in dance academies around the world), these movements allow them to connect in a very particular way with their ancestors and that is the reason that the appearance of their dancers also matters, which use coconut oil in their skin, touched with plumes and clothes very sensitive to their movements.
The name of this ocean did not fight its islands, obviously, of clashes for the lands and their resources, which in some cases were not brief. Sometimes these conflicts derived from the resistance to colonization (the Maorí Chief Hone Heke was famous for refusing to submission), and in World War II, as is known, in these territories hard battles were fought. Today the challenges are others: sustainability and population growth.
The clothes that the warriors wore the objective of intimidating the enemy, in addition to as protection, and a separate chapter deserve the clubs, which in this area were used with multiple purposes: in dances, in the speeches as a sign of distinction and in the warm parades.
We said that textile work was in charge of women; Among the works considered male was the size, also transmitted from generation to generation. When the result of the pieces was particularly virtuous, it was considered that its maker, virtuous, had been blessed by the gods. Some, very complex, were specifically used at funerals and then abandoned in the forests; However, the prestige of the Tallists was such that they acquired the social consideration of the priests.
In this section we will observe a replica of A’asculpture arriving from the island of Rurutu: dated in the 16th or seventeenth century, its inhabitants were offered to the Missionary Society of London in the nineteenth century, to commemorate its conversion to Christianity. It may be the best preserved Polynesian sculpture, attracted the avant -garde artists fascinated by primitivism and took Roland Penrose, Pablo Picasso or Henry Moore.
The last exposure device is made with plastic bottles, it is called Bottled Ocean 2123 And it is the work of the New Zealand artist, resident in France, George Nuku, who has carried out it together with CaixaForum public, collaboratively. Present today at the exhibition, he explained that, because of his chances of suggesting beauty and the bad consequences of his overabundance, it is possible to consider this material as an ancestor to relate from a philosophical and cultural perspective. Not exempt from magic in your danger.
“Voices of the Pacific. Innovation and tradition”
CaixaForum Madrid
Paseo del Prado, 36
Madrid
From May 28 to September 14, 2025
