Remaking Middi: reclaiming and re-contextualising Tolai materiality and cultural histories into the contemporary

The effect of trade, religion and colonialism upon Pacific people during the 19th century changed the material and spiritual culture of the Pacific region. As new European customs were introduced, Indigenous cultural frameworks were broken down, causing the neglect, discarding and abandonment of traditional knowledge and practice of historical crafts and culture. The Middi or ‘shell collar’ as it is referred to by museums, was one such object that became culturally devalued and transformed through colonialism, trade and missionary impact. The predominant trajectory of Pacific art and objects has long been within an anthropological and ethnographical context and rarely from an Indigenous perspective. My research aims to utilise an object that I culturally identify with as a tool to remake, reclaim and reframe Tolai cultural history in a contemporary art context. Through remaking the Middi and other intangible histories my aim is to; acquire historical cultural knowledge, reclaim a former cultural practice, reframe historical colonial and religious impacts upon Tolai culture and re-contextualise Tolai material culture and history through contemporary art.