fa'amatalaga tufuga
artist statement
T I K I P O E M
dan taulapapa mcmullin
Tiki mug, tiki mug
My face, my mother’s face, my father’s face, my sister’s face
Tiki mug, tiki mug
White beachcombers in tiki bars drinking zombie cocktails from tiki mugs
The undead, the Tiki people, my mother’s face, my father’s face
The black brown and ugly that make customers feel white and beautiful
Tiki mugs, tiki ashtrays, tiki trashcans, tiki kitsch cultures
Tiki bars in Los Angeles, a tiki porn theatre, tiki stores
Tiki conventions, a white guy named Kukulelei singing in oogabooga fake Hawaiian
makes me yearn to hear a true Kanaka Maoli like Kaumakaiwa Kanaka'ole sing chant move his hands the antidote to tiki bar people who don't listen because tiki don’t speak any language do theyTiki bars in L.A., in Tokyo, in the lands of Tiki, Honolulu, Pape’ete
Wherever tourists need a background of black skin brown skin ugly faces
to feel land of the free expensive rich on vacation hard working with a background of wallpaper tiki lazy people wallpaper made from our skins our faces our ancestors our bloodYes its all wrong but looks like my great grandmother’s fale sort of
except she isn’t here and it doesn’t really, her fale didn’t have a neon sign blinking for one thingAnd yes it looks like Polynesian sculpture sort of not really but what
is the difference, the difference is this, we didn’t make itor if we did it was someone desperate but probably not any of usjust someone making a buck carving sh*t for drunksThe difference is this our sculpture is beautiful, tiki kitsch sculpture is ugly
not because they look so very different but because their sh*t is SUPPOSED TO BE UGLYbecause we are supposed to be uglyand if we are ugly then they are BEAUTIFUL American or European or Australian or even Asian or I’m sorry but a lot of us too and ANYONE can be beautiful and expensive as long as tiki kitsch is on the walls looking ugly and cheapI like going to tiki bars sometimes and hearing island music or
doing island karaoke and there are tiki bars in the islands sort of but there they’re just bars and I’m HERE in Los Angeles or anywhere here in the so-called West which is EVERYWHERE and here, we are tiki mug people, my mother’s face, my father’s facemy face, my sister’s faceOur Tiki sculptures are based on OUR classic carvings, which are abstractions, idealizations
of BEAUTY, our beauty, though in these bars they are…Well, you get it
Can I remind us that Tiki
Whom we call Ti’eti’e and Ti'iti'i
Some call Ki’i, some call Ti’i
That Tiki was beautiful, jutting eyebrow, thick lips, wide nose
brown skin in some islandsblack skin in some islandsbrown black deep, thick thighsjutting eyebrow, thick lips, wide nostrils, breathingLifting the sky over Samoa, lifting the sky over Tonga
lifting the sky over Viti, lifting the sky over Rapanuilifting the sky over Tahiti, lifting the sky over Hawai’ilifting the sky over Aotearoa, and looking to, paying respects to Papua, to the Chamorro, to Vanuatu, to Kiribatilifting the ten heavens above Moana, not your Pacific, but our MoanaAnd now in tiki bars Chilean soldiers have drinks from tiki mugs after shooting
down Rapanui protestors in Rapanui, not Easter Island, not Isla de Pascuabut Rapanui, whose entire population was kidnapped and sold in slavery to Chilean mines in the 19th century, and whose survivors are shot on the streets of their lands still just a few days ago in 2011 in RapanuiAnd American police drink maitais in Honolulu bars from tiki mugs while
native Hawaiian people live homeless on the beachesAnd Indonesian settlers drink from tiki mugs in West Papua where 100,000
Papuans have been killed seeking freedom after being sold down the river by President Kennedy so he could build some mines for his rich cultivated humanitarian friendsAnd French tourists drink from tiki mugs in Nouvelle Calédonie and Polynesie Française
while native people are…Where? Where are we?
In the wallpaper, on the mugs?
