The 14th International Symposium of the Pacific Arts Association

The symposium is also part of a series of gatherings aimed at rethinking global art histories through the expansive and intellectual space of the Wereldmuseum, which challenges the structures and assumptions of both art history and anthropology through new approaches to material culture. The title of these gatherings ‘blazing forms’, taken from Margaret Danner’s poem The Convert, that initially applied to the blazing power of African art and material culture is here applied to Oceania to become Oceanic Blazing Forms: Memory, Place-making and Imagination.

Ronny Kareni Keynote | Like a Tifa Drum: The Harder You Beat, the Louder We Become 

Like a tifa drum, the harder you beat, the louder we become. This truth sits at the heart of West Papua’s socio-cultural and political life, where every attempt to suppress our voices only intensifies the rhythm of our resistance. This keynote traces a journey shaped through music and activism, grounded in the understanding that the tifa drum is both teacher and companion, carrying stories of reverence, resistance, and collective memory across generations.  

Drawing on this lived experience, the keynote explores how rhythm becomes a method of survival and a strategy of visibility. When the state tightens its grip, the drumbeat intensifies. Art becomes a conduit through which West Papuans assert identity, dignity, and political presence, even in the face of censorship, displacement, and repression. Cultural expression becomes a medium for creativity and a political necessity.  

This keynote invites arts institutions and curators to practical move in unison, drumming alongside communities and strengthening cultural artform as an ongoing form of arts cultural revival and resistance. Through the tifa’s resonance, we hear not only a beat, but a people refusing to be silenced.

Keynote Deidre Brown | Toi Te Mana: Understanding Māori art 

How might we understand the great breadth and diversity of toi Māori from its Polynesian beginnings to the present day? In 2012, three Māori art historians—Deidre Brown, Ngarino Ellis and Jonathan Mane-Wheoki—embarked on the ambitious task of addressing this question by writing a comprehensive Māori art history from a Māori perspective. Their recently published book, Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art (Auckland University Press, 2024; Chicago University Press, 2025) has won several national and international awards, including the global 2025 Apollo Book of the Year prize. In this talk, Deidre presents the work of Māori artists as creative practitioners, recorders of history, and agents of change. She discusses the continuities between customary and contemporary art, and how the book’s research made important new discoveries about Māori art and brought to light the long-forgotten stories of taonga Māori (Māori treasures) in museums.  

Keynote Brian Diettrich | Blazing Voices and the Capacity of Song and Dance: Expression and Social Action in Oceania 

This keynote address responds to the message and intent of Margaret Danner’s The Convert (1960) that guides the 2026 Pacific Arts Association and its theme of Oceanic Blazing Forms. Danner was inspired by African art in a powerful awakening to new aesthetic shapes, but the poem prompts deeper questions about how to engage with the material world: what was the purpose of the figure in society and what unrevealed power might have remained hidden in its forms? In this keynote presentation, I ask how we might consider performance beyond mere aesthetics, and I examine the capacity and power for social change within Oceanic song and dance in historical and contemporary contexts. How does performance create and impact change and how might this social capability complement our aesthetic understanding of art across the Pacific and globally? In what ways have Pacific communities and artists employed performance to confront colonialism, communicate solidarity, or address cultural and environmental crises? In this presentation I draw widely on examples of Pacific performance, before focusing in particular on song and dance within Chuuk in Micronesia, and where I’ve collaborated over the past 25 years. In an exploration of the social potential within song and dance, I hope to better understand the deeper, active quality of ‘from-within-glow’ by which Danner was awakened.  

Keynote Sana Balai | Carrying the Line: Memory, Land, and Women’s Cultural Practices in Bougainville 

Aunty Sana Balai’s presentation examines how memory, place‑making, and imagination operate as interconnected cultural technologies throughout her life and work. A Bougainville-born curator, cultural custodian, and mentor, Aunty Sana bridges ancestral knowledge systems with contemporary creative expression, drawing deeply from the matrilineal epistemologies of Buka Island. Her practice highlights how women’s cultural traditions—especially those passed through the ha’tutu (second-born sister) lineage—sustain systems of governance, land stewardship, and ceremonial authority that have shaped Bougainville for generations. 

Her co‑curatorship of Women’s Wealth at the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial (APT9) exemplifies this philosophy. The exhibition centred women as holders of economic, spiritual, and artistic power, presenting pottery, weaving, and other embodied practices as living archives of history and future possibility. Through this work, Aunty Sana illuminated the depth and resilience of women’s cultural labour across the Pacific. 

Beyond institutional settings, Aunty Sana extends her methodology into the diaspora communities, including Pasifika communities mentoring young and emerging artists as they navigate displacement, cultural continuity, and creative sovereignty. Through relational guidance, studio visits, and intergenerational dialogue, she creates spaces where artists can reconnect with ancestral memory while imagining new forms of belonging. Her approach demonstrates that place‑making is not only geographic but also mnemonic and imaginative, reactivating kinship, story, and land-based knowledge across distance. 

By weaving together Bougainville’s matrilineal knowledge systems, the collaborative ethos of Women’s Wealth, and her sustained mentorship of Pacific creatives, this presentation argues that Aunty Sana’s work offers a vital framework for understanding how Indigenous women’s cultural practices shape contemporary art, community resilience, and Pacific futures.