Asia Pacic Viewpoint, Vol. 52, No.

1, April 2011 ISSN 1360-7456, pp516

Export quality: Representing Fijian bodies and the economy of war

Torika Bolatagici
College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, New South Wales, and School of Communication and Creative Arts, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia. Email: [email protected]

Abstract: Fijian bodies have become a valuable commodity in the economy of war. Remittances from workers overseas are Fijis largest income exceeding that of tourism and sugar export. This essay examines historical and contemporary representations of the black male body that perpetuate the exploitation of Fijians by inscribing the Fijian male body as warrior, criminal and protector. Taking a multidisciplinary approach informed by sociology, cultural theory, Pacic studies, visual culture, feminist and post-colonial theory, my practice is the vehicle through which I address issues of neocolonial commodication of Fijian bodies. Through an analysis of my own staged photographs and vernacular images taken by Fijians working for private security military companies and British and US armies, I hope to challenge audiences to consider their own perceptions of Fijian agency and subjectivity. By theorising the politicisation of the black body and interrogating colonial representations of blackness, I argue that we can begin to create links between the historical and contemporary exploitation of Fijians and that at the essence of both is an underlying racial hierarchy and economic requirement for cheap and, arguably, expendable labour. Keywords: contemporary photography, Fiji, masculinity, militarism, Pacic, private security military company

Introduction Tracing the pre-contact history of militarism in Fiji, Halapua described the bati in Fijian culture as [w]arriors [who] were set apart and called to action when their services were needed (Halapua, 2003: 46). Halapua went on to make the connection between this form of pre-contact militarism and colonial war efforts in which Fijians fought for foreign armies in both World Wars. Between 1957 and 1958, the British Army recruited young Fijian soldiers to work alongside British and New Zealand soldiers in Britains nine atmospheric nuclear tests at Christmas Island and Malden Island. Since 1978, the Royal Fiji Military Forces have deployed as United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon and Sinai. While there has been some research into Fijian masculinity in relation to political coups, warrior culture and militarisation over the last decade, there is an absence of critical discussion about the ongoing colonisation of Fijian male bodies.
2011 The Author Asia Pacic Viewpoint 2011 Victoria University of Wellington

This essay examines historical and contemporary representations of the black male body that perpetuate the exploitation of Fijians by inscribing the Fijian male body as warrior, athlete, criminal and protector. In this essay, my photographic images and installations are the vehicle for addressing what I perceive as the ongoing neocolonial commodication of Fijian bodies. I begin to lay the historical groundwork for my research and art practice by considering the participation of Fijian men in the British nuclear tests at Christmas Island and Malden Island in the 1950s. The tests were a devastating example of colonial enterprise and left a signicant impact on the health and well-being of the test veterans and their families. I then move to the more contemporary phenomenon of private security military recruitment in Fiji and ask if it is possible for Fijians to claim agency over the representation of the Fijian male body. To illustrate this notion of agency, I look at images from the now-defunct social networking website Sotia Central.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2011.01438.x

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I conclude by analysing more universal aspects of black embodiment and how they might apply to the Fijian male body in a globalised economy of war. I argue that the Fijian male has been reduced to the corporeal in a black body/white body dichotomy that denies Fijian men a spiritual aspect to their existence and justies the ongoing project of colonial enterprise that relies on the exploitation of cheap labour. While the issues surrounding representations of the black body discussed herein might share commonalities with representations of other Pacic Islander males, my research speaks specically of the Fijian experience. My multidisciplinary approach is informed by sociology; cultural theory; Pacic studies; visual culture, feminist and post-colonial theory. Although I use the description black body as a collective term to encompass bodies that are non-white I do not subscribe to an essentialist notion of race. My perspective is informed by the critical writing of post-colonial and feminist theorists including bell hooks (1992), Susan Bordo (2002), Radhika Mohanram (1999) and Judith Butler (2009). Over the past 10 years, my photographic practice has been primarily concerned with identity, specically mixed-race identity and representations of gender and the body. As a kailoma woman (of mixed Fijian and European ancestry) who was born and raised in Australia, exploring my Fijian heritage has been the impetus for much of my work. My visual art practice tends to emerge from a post-colonial feminist perspective that seeks to expand ideas around our understanding of black subjectivity and challenge mainstream representations of black embodiment. Recently, I have shifted away from autobiographical themes to tackle global issues such as the privatisation of war and the impact that this has on communities in Fiji. That said, matters of Fijian masculinity and security have a personal resonance with me as my father was a security guard at a Sydney nightclub for many years, my cousinbrother in Suva is a security guard and another cousin in Suva had completed the paperwork to apply for work in Iraq before changing his mind. I also have other Melanesian family members who have been, or are still, members of the Australian Defence Force. So 6

Figure 1. Protect Me, Torika Bolatagici, 2009, digital chromogenic print on Flex, 50.8 40.6 cm

the links between security and military employment and the Fijian males in my family run deep. These personal links are referred to in the self-portrait Protect Me (Fig. 1) in which a Fiji Military Forces badge is pictured clenched between teeth. As a visual artist, I feel compelled to respond to the world around me, and I believe that artists are in a unique position to employ a visual language that can speak to audiences in different ways to text an evocative visual language that can elicit an emotional response and sometimes raises more questions than necessarily providing answers.

Nuclear tests and primitive bodies The works Another Sun (Fig. 2), My Water (Inside/Out) (Fig. 3) and My Air (Outside/In) (Fig. 4) were inspired by the book Kirisimasi (Tubanavau-Salabula et al., 1999), which was published by the Pacic Concerns Resource Centre. The harrowing collection is composed of the Fijian veterans recollections of their experiences of the tests. Contained within their accounts are references to the ongoing health issues that many of them and their families continue to suffer, including documented birth defects among their children, their partners multiple miscarriages, their own infertility, skin conditions and leukaemia for which they have not been compensated. While the devastating experience and legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacic is shared among the indigenous populations of Kiribati, French Polynesia and Marshall
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Figure 2.

Another Sun, Torika Bolatagici, 2007, digital print on 100% cotton rag. Dimensions variable

Figure 3. My Water (Inside/Out), Torika Bolatagici, 2009, digital print on 100% cotton rag, 60 60 cm

Figure 4. My Air (Outside/In), Torika Bolatagici, 2009, digital print on 100% cotton rag, 60 60 cm

Islands, this paper is based on the Fijian testimony of Operation Grapple. One particular testimonial that resonated with me was that of Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, one of Fijis rst Oxford graduates, a chiey, military and political leader who visited Malden Island in May 1957. Fiji Naval Commander Stan Brown accompanied Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau:
[l]ater Brown and Ratu Penaia were taken ashore to Malden Island to check the radio activity. They were given rubber boots to protect their feet but the Navy couldnt nd a pair large enough for Ratu Penaias feet. So he went without. It was rather frightening as bushes were still smoldering, Brown comments . . . [f]rom Malden they were own back to Christmas Island where Ratu Penaias feet were found to be very hot (TubanavauSalabula et al., 1999: 36).

Minimal protection for Fijian and British soldiers bodies was provided, and many of the
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veterans recall wearing their daily work clothes during the tests. Others were given white cloth suits and elbow length gloves and boots to protect them from burns. All were instructed to turn their backs to the blast and cover their eyes. After the explosion, they were allowed to turn around and view the cloud (e.g. TubanavauSalabula et al., 1999). The use of the grid in My Water (Inside/ Out) and My Air (Outside/In) refers to the names of the tests during Operation Grapple (Grapple X, Grapple Y and Grapple Z) and symbolises lines of axis. The gure in each image looms large over the representations of land and water, and there is disparity in scale and relationship between the two elements. The frame is disrupted further by the presence of a black square in each of the corners suggesting incompleteness, emptiness or perhaps, concealment. The titles refer to the external and internal damage that the British and Fijian veterans were subjected to through 7

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environmental contamination of air and water and subsequent resources. In 2009, top secret documents belonging to British Ministry of Defence were published and revealed that the aims of the Christmas Island tests were to determine the effectiveness of the atomic bomb as well as the effects on personnel who were within range of the tests:
[t]he paper stated there was a level B of radioactivity at which a small temporary but observable physiological effect would be produced in a small fraction (less than one percent) of a population exposed to it. And the paper declared that for primitive peoples who did not wear boots and clothing and did not wash, the danger level was somewhat lower . . . [t]he minutes recorded that the Minister of Supply should be informed that the radiation levels recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) would be necessarily exceeded but that only very slight health hazard to people would arise and that only to primitive peoples (Narsey, 2009).

What these documents expose is the very real way in which primitive black bodies have been devalued, and the justications that are based on racist assumptions about the robust black body being able to withstand nuclear radiation.

Export quality While the Fijians at Malden and Christmas Island in the 1950s were performing their duties as members of the Fiji Navy and Army, the aggressive recruitment by British-, Americanand Kuwait-based private security military companies (PSMCs) in Fiji over the past seven years has signalled a shift in the way that Fijian bodies operate in the global economy of war. What has emerged is a situation in which Fijians are now able to capitalise on their reputation as robust warriors and loyal colleagues, and since 2003, increasing numbers of Fijian men have been recruited by PSMCs to do what Pratap Chatterjee calls the dirty, dull and dangerous work (Democracy Now, 2009). It is necessary at this point to make a distinction between soldiers in the Republic of Fiji Military Forces, British, American and Australian armies and Fijians who are employed by PSMCs. While 8

both soldiers and private security workers have played a signicant role in maintaining a culture of militarism in Fiji, there are stark differences in roles, responsibilities and regulation of PSMCs. Since 2003, an increasing number of Fijian men have been recruited by companies such as Armour Group (UK), Global Risk Strategies (UK), Homeland Security Ltd (UK), British Control Solutions (UK) and its agency Sabre International Security Fiji Ltd, Triple Canopy (USA), Public Warehouse Company (Kuwait) and its Fijian subsidiary Meridian Security Services for work as soldiers, security guards, drivers, labourers, mechanics, storemen and computer operators (Keenan, 2005; Gaglioti, 2006). Recruitment by private contractors between April and September in 2006 resulted in the deaths of up to 20 Fijian men during their employment in the Middle East (Vatiskopoulos, 2006). Ema Tagicakibau of the Pacic Concerns Resource Centre regards this form of recruiting in the Pacic as blackbirding all over again (pers. comm., 2006). MacLellan claimed that the Fijian men who have been recruited to the Middle East are often paid less than they are promised for the highrisk work that they are recruited for (MacLellan, 2006) and employment with such contractors is problematic because of the secrecy surrounding the contracts and the lack of accountability to authorities in Fiji, Britain, Kuwait or the USA. There are many documented disputes regarding unfullled and misleading employment contracts and pay. A Human Rights Council working group visited Fiji in 2007 to investigate growing concerns about the presence of military recruiters in the Pacic and South America. Its report stated that [i]t appears to be this mixture of supply and incentives, coupled with a limited to non-existent legal framework, [which] has created a breeding ground for the recruitment of Fijians to work for Private Security Military Companies (Human Rights Council, 2008: 17). The social impact of 20 men dying in such a small community cannot be underestimated, but death is by no means the only cause of anxiety or disruptive effect of recent military recruitments: in 2006, there were 47 Fijian private security guards stranded in Kuwait, unable to return to Fiji because of dubious contracts and over 2000 Fijian soldiers serving in
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British, Australian and New Zealand armies as well as members of United Nations peacekeeping efforts around the globe (Judd, 2006: 26). The working group reported that [a]t the time of the visit, 21 Fijians had reportedly been killed while working for PSMCs in Iraq, with several others injured (Human Rights Council, 2008: 14). The report from the Human Rights Council indicates an acknowledgement of the problematic employment conditions encountered by Fijians working for PSMCs. However, history and contemporary politics of race and representation when coupled with a war economy that relies on cheap labour tend to suggest a devaluing of the lives and deaths of black bodies. This, combined with the economic vulnerability of the Pacic region, has led to a contemporary problem in which Fijian bodies have become increasingly commodied. Security work now brings in more money than tourism, sugar or clothing production. Journalist Frank Gaglioti (2006) has observed that desperate former soldiers are eager to exploit a lucrative export commodity [and] see no way out except to put their own lives on the line in Iraq. Former Fijian Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase explained in a 2006 interview that remittances from residents of Fiji, or citizens of Fiji who have gone abroad, has become the second-largest foreign exchange earner for the country (Vatiskopoulos, 2006). The economy of war, in which the recruitment of cheap Pacic labour is relatively unregulated, means that the Fijian male has entered a global market in which his body is now subject to colonial and neocolonial racist stereotypes that have been perpetuated through images and have contributed to the oppression of black people collectively (see Golden, 1994; Willis, 1994; Hooks, 1995; Doy, 2000; Creed and Hoorn, 2001; Fusco and Wallis, 2003; Jackson, 2010). Furthermore, the specicity of private security work means that the Fijian male body becomes part of a global economy and loses much of its agency outside the structures of indigenous Fijian culture. In a sense, the Fijian body is stripped bare and re-inscribed with notions of an essential universal blackness. One might wonder why PMSC recruitment is problematic since it provides employment and
2011 The Author Asia Pacic Viewpoint 2011 Victoria University of Wellington

travel opportunities for Fijians in a country where unemployment increased 4.9% between 1996 and 2007 (Fiji Islands Bureau of Statistics, 2009: 2). However, as we have seen, it has proven to be extremely dangerous work and the benets comes at a high cost. Anecdotally, families have been known to encourage their loved ones to apply for this work with the knowledge that if they are killed, they will receive a signicant payout. Also, there are the well-documented recruiters who have been charging large application fees without following through with employment (SBS Dateline, 2005). The conditions of such recruitment are highly problematic and we are only beginning to see the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and other repercussions of service in a war zone, such as domestic violence, substance abuse, depression and sexually transmitted diseases. The 2008 Report of the Working Group of the Use of Mercenaries as a Means of Violating Human Rights Impeding the Exercise of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination noted that Fijian NGO representatives informed the Working Group that no counselling is available and that there are no debriefings with trained psychologists (p. 15). While the Fiji Military Forces provide counselling for its own employees, civilians who return from work with PSMCs need to seek out their own support through mental health services such as the Psychiatric Survivors Association or the Pacic Centre for Peace Building (PCPB). The PCPB offers a wide range of services including counselling, mediation and training specically around raising awareness of conict analysis and trauma healing (Pacic Centre for Peacebuilding: 8). So, dened as valuable commodities in the economy of war, how do Fijian security workers and soldiers exercise their agency and lay claim to their own bodies? In the following sections, I will take a closer look at this notion of commodication and vulnerability of black bodies and how this has been addressed in my own imagery and that of other contemporary artists. Expendable esh: The commodication of Fijian bodies Responding to the brutal police slaying of Guinean immigrant, Amadou Diallo in New 9

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York in 1999, multidisciplinary artist Mendi Obadike (2000) recalled I knew, intellectually, that I had to work against the notion that black people were expendable. In the online work My Hands/Wishful Thinking (2000), Obadike presented us with 41 thoughts to counter the 41 shots that were red at the unarmed Diallo, who was killed for reaching into his pocket for his wallet the police mistaking it for a weapon. The nal thought, no. 41 read your back, open and gorgeous, is dark in a doorway and not a target. I was thinking of this work when I created the series Expendable Flesh (Fig. 5). In this series, we see a bare black torso with a target superimposed onto the chest. The colours red, white and blue are symbolic of the ags of colonial powers and the countries that continue to recruit Fijian labour: Britain and the USA. The black body is depicted as bare and vulnerable, unidentiable and reduced to the corporeal, as it has been for so many centuries. In creating the work, I knew that I wanted the images to be startling and striking. However, I have been forced to reconsider the didactic nature of such imagery in light of Jacksons cautionary reminder:
[t]hese contemporary images of suffering black male bodies can potentially conrm the integrity of the viewers white body, by seemingly giving them power over that body. Indeed, the less the viewer identies with the vulnerability of that body, the more likely the viewer is to presume power over that body (Jackson, 2010:57).

Spirit of enterprise: Black corporeality/ white spirit Richard Dyers (1997) extensive work about whiteness provides a useful explanation of the cultural and historical basis to the positioning of the white body as more than corporeal and the ways in which the white body has been privileged in relation to the black body. This notion sets up a distinction between black bodies (considered corporeal and of the esh) and white bodies (which embody a metaphysical existence). Dyer explained, [b]lack people can be reduced (in white culture) to their bodies and thus to race, but white people are something else that is realised in and yet is not reducible to the corporeal/or racial (Dyer, 1997: 1415). Hokowhitu has written about Maori masculinity in a Pacic context and has noted that the Maori male body has also been reduced to the physical as opposed to the intellectual and represented as ruled by passion as opposed to reason (Hokowhitu, 2004: 260266). Fusco also explains how whiteness is central to the project of colonial enterprise:
[w]hereas systems of racial classication from the eighteenth century onward reduced people of colour to the corporeal, whiteness was understood as a spirit that manifests itself in a dynamic relation to the physical world. Whiteness, then, does not need to be made visible to present an image; it can be expressed as the spirit of enterprise, as the power to organise the material world, and as an expansive relation to the environment. (Fusco and Wallis, 2003: 34)

In 2009, I began to move away from presenting the black body as the bare, central feature of my work as my reading shifted towards theories of whiteness.

Susan Bordo has noted that this spirit of enterprise has been used as justication for the

Figure 5.

Red, White and Blue, Torika Bolatagici, 2007, from the series Expendable Flesh, digital print on 100% cotton rag, 55.8 55.8 cm each 2011 The Author Asia Pacic Viewpoint 2011 Victoria University of Wellington

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Figure 6.

Export Quality#1, Export Quality#2, Export Quality#3, Export Quality#4 (installation view), Torika Bolatagici, 2009 Illuminated chromogenic print on Duratran, approximately 42 54 cm

inhuman treatment of the primitive savage and explained that [b]y the end of the nineteenth century, Europeans began rethinking their attitudes toward the primitive savage, not out of any sense of morality or political correctness, but because the primitive savage was beginning to be seen as having/something the European gentleman lacked and needed (Bordo, 2002: 248249). This lack was perceived as brute strength and an innate bodily intuition ideal for manual labour and warfare. The writing of Dyer, Bordo and Fusco provided the conceptual background for the work Export Quality (Fig. 6) featuring a series of four large light boxes that were produced in 2009. The title is a reference to text that appears on cans of Fiji Bitter beer but refers to the much more serious issue of bodies as a commodity to be exported. Rather than focusing on the skin, and the surface of the body, I refer also to the absence of the body. By removing the gure from half the image and leaving a white space, my intention was to raise questions about notions of absence
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and presence, visibility and invisibility, both literally in relation to bodily visibility in modern warfare, and guratively in relation to spirituality and corporeality. In the white spaces, traditional Fijian masi (tapa cloth) designs have been stamped into the illuminated backlit lm. These patterns are then illuminated when the light box is powered and serve as a reminder of indigenous Fijian spirituality that predates modern warfare and transcends corporeality through ancestral links. Dyers work on whiteness is essential to understanding how black bodies have historically been devalued a theme that is central to my ongoing project. Furthermore, Fusco and Bordos work explicitly link racial classication with entrepreneurial fervour and the emergence of exploitative relationships based on notions of superiority (whiteness) and inferiority (blackness). When applied to the contemporary economy of war, we can see how the American and British neocolonial project relies heavily upon the economic vulnerability of Fijians to perform the essential duties of security and 11

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Figure 7.

Buli Vacu (to clench the sts to ght), Torika Bolatagici, 2007, from the series Security/Threat, digital print on 100% cotton rag. Dimensions variable

Figure 8.

Vaniqa (the sound of someone treading on leaves), Torika Bolatagici, 2007, from the series Security/Threat, digital print on 100% cotton rag. Dimensions variable

Figure 9.

Dau Butako (burglar), Torika Bolatagici, 2007, from the series Security/Threat, digital print on 100% cotton rag. Dimensions variable

combat work, a low-cost alternative to American or British workers. This notion of physical and economic vulnerability is explored in my series Security/Threat (Figs 79), which fuses traditional warrior gestures, inspired by colonial photography, with contemporary Fijian suburban settings to create an unsettling juxtaposition that addresses the complexity of black embodiment. Security/threat: Vulnerable bodies The works in the Security/Threat series (Figs 79) emerge from the premise that the 12

black body is inscribed as both threat and victim. The images address this dichotomy and are designed as diptychs. The left-hand side of each image is a scene from Nasinu photographed at night. On the right hand side, the gure assumes poses that were common in the colonial images of Fijians from the Dufty collection, which were produced in the studio of Frank Dufty in Levuka and then Suva between 1871 and 1894 (see dOzouville, 1997; Ewins, 2009). In the original staged images from the late 19th century, the Fijian subjects are pictured holding traditional weapons such as a club or battleaxe. In my
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reinterpretations of these images, the weapons have been removed and are referred to through gesture. The removal of the weapons draws the focus back to the body: no longer protected by a weapon, instead assuming an authoritative stance that suggests protection and security. The background scenes were photographed in Nasinu, a suburb just outside Fijis capital, and the gures were photographed in a studio in Melbourne, Australia. I spent some time in Nasinu in 2006, and developed a heightened awareness for matters of security. There were bars on all the residential windows and uorescent security lights illuminated each house, while barking dogs alerted residents to passersby. At the time, the Fiji Times and Fiji Sun featured stories about violent home invasions, robberies and assaults. Just prior to my visit, a friends home had been invaded despite them having gated security, a dog and a security guard. She described how burglars were often naked so that people would not be able to grip clothing and their bodies would be oiled so that they could slip away from potential grasp. Rod Ewins, when writing about my work, commented that it reminded him of the Fijian ceremonial custom of applying oil and tumeric to the warriors body (Ewins, 2009). Security/Threat (Figs 79) speaks to the double bind of the black body perceived as both threat and protector. These images are intended to compel the viewer to consider the futility of reductive dichotomies that seek to inscribe the black body as either menace or shield to be either feared or revered. Cassandra Jackson summed up this dichotomised reading of the black body in her discussion of hip hop album artwork [t]hat the subjects posture can be read as intimidating or entreating at once, speaks to this complexity of myth and desire that materialises in the image (Jackson, 2010: 53). To this point, the discussion has focused on an analysis of the theoretical underpinning and symbolism in my own visual arts practice, all of which are carefully staged re-enactments, shot in controlled environments and digitally altered to illustrate a particular concept. In contrast to these works, the following section considers vernacular photographs that have been taken by Fijians employed by private security contractors and by the British and US armies. These found photographs give us an insight into the ways in
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which Fijian masculinity and militarism is performed and co-constructed by Fijians and in the democratised space of social networking websites, these images serve the purpose of destabilising existing notions of a homogenous Fijian masculinity. Sotia central: Picturing ourselves Until it was taken ofine in April 2009,1 Sotia Central (translation: soldier central) was a social networking website that was hosted by the Fiji Times and had almost 20 000 members who were composed of Fijians working for private security companies as well as Fijians employed by the British and US armies. The site which operated as a combination of personal proles, chat and forum allowed users to manage their own public photo galleries, which is where I discovered the images included in the Sotia Central installation (Figs 10,11). While these salvaged images were originally collected for the purpose of research, they have acquired new signicance since they no longer exist in the public domain and have been appropriated by me for the purpose of creating juxtaposition with my own stylised, studio-based photographs. The images retrieved from the original website are also crucial in forming an understanding of how Fijian private security employees and military personnel picture themselves and how Fijian representations of militarism and the body differ to non-Fijian representations of Fijian bodies and militarism. In this sense, we can also look at the Fijian soldiers and private security employees as active agents in the maintenance of images of Fijian militarism and masculinity. It is not accurate or useful to view Fijian men as helpless victims in the global economy. As Teaiwa has noted, there is a need to acknowledge that militarism is coconstructed; and in the Pacic, an active participant in such co-constructions is the Native (Teaiwa, 2001: 86). In the installation Sotia Central (Figs 10,11), we see predominantly males at work and in moments of leisure. We see lovos being eaten on the back of pornographic centrefolds, kava drinking in the desert, posing with tanks, aircraft, machinery, weapons and dressing up in military regalia. Many of the found images of 13

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Figure 10.

Sotia Central, Torika Bolatagici, 2009. Found images. Dimensions variable

Figure 11.

Sotia Central, Torika Bolatagici, 2009. Found images. Dimensions variable

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Figure 12.

Black Gold (Piper methysticum), Torika Bolatagici, 2009. Digital chromogenic print on Flex, 76 50 cm

hyper-masculinity are embedded with notions of colonial warrior pride and militaristic posturing. However, we also see representations of monotony and attempts to maintain Fijian cultural traditions in a foreign environment. The work Black Gold (Piper methysticum) (Fig. 12) acknowledges the latter, and was inspired by the images found on the Sotia Central website and depicts a pair of Fijian hands wringing yaqona (a traditional Fijian kava drink) through a kefyeh, signifying the ways in which cultural tradition is adapted and maintained under extraordinary circumstances. Conclusion The mixed media installation Winds of Change (Fig. 13) presents 12 Fijian ags folded in the format customary for American military funerals to signify Fijians dying for foreign conicts. The irony here is that private security workers are not subject to such formal ceremony and heroic recognition if they are killed overseas. The folded ags are arranged in the shape of a windmill motif that is common to tapa designs in the Pacic. The Union Jack, which still appears in the corner of the Fijian ag, reminds us of the legacy of colonisation and is deconstructed as the ags gradually fall out of line, symbolising instability and disintegration. Underneath the ags is a traditional handwoven Fijian mat, which is an essential feature of a Fijian funeral. Ultimately, this work is about colonialism, death, loss and transition in a country that is known for its political instability. Just how Fijian bodies have become valuable commodities in the modern economy of war is
2011 The Author Asia Pacic Viewpoint 2011 Victoria University of Wellington Figure 13. Winds of Change, Torika Bolatagici, 2009. Fijian ags and Fijian mat. Dimensions variable

the result of complex and overlapping histories of race, gender, militarism and colonialism in the Pacic. By theorising the politicisation of the black body and interrogating colonial representations of blackness, we can begin to create links between the historical exploitation of Fijians (Christmas Island nuclear tests) and cotemporary exploitation of Fijians (PSMCs). At the essence of both historical moments is an underlying racial hierarchy and economic requirement for cheap, and arguably, expendable labour. Visual art practice provides an outlet for artists to intuitively weave together these histories and discursive concepts. Practice-based research allows artists to test ideas, push boundaries and challenge audiences to consider their own perceptions of agency and subjectivity. Fijians have an economic interest in maintaining the tough island warrior stereotype as illustrated by the vernacular images in Sotia 15

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Central, and their agency must be acknowledged. However, it is also important to consider the contemporary situation as an extension of neocolonial enterprise that relies on the devaluation of black bodies to further global militaristic pursuits. Note
1 In 2008, the Sotia Central moderators sent the following email message to all users: A message to all members of Sotia Central. The new Fiji Interim Government has issued regulations requiring publishers to rst submit all content to Government ofcials for clearance before publishing it. Because you, not we, generate this content, we are unable to comply. Accordingly, sotiacentral.com has been taken down until further notice.

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