Authentic Primitive Art and Indigenous Global Desires between Reality and Hyperreality
In the 1980s, the anti-evolutionary turn of humanities and the “vanishing” of primitive cultures and their crafts provoked what Shelly Errington terms as the “double death of authentic primitive art.” In more recent times, Errington continues, the increasing postmodern blur of high and low art have further disconnected the notions of “authentic” and “primitive” from art. In this paper, I contend that the current topicality of these notions in reference to art within the dynamics of the Art Zone, that is, the zone of negotiations between the different (f)actors involved in the art market. To support my argument, I take into examination one of the most iconic art traditions of this category, that of the Asmat of West Papua (Indonesia). By retracing its process of art formation, I investigate the current state of the art of the multifaceted notions of “authenticity” and “primitivism” both in the reality of Asmat land and the hyperreality of the theme park of Taman Mini “Indonesia Indah” in Jakarta. This combined exploration of Asmat art will provide a reassessment in emic terms of the paradigm of authentic primitive art as well as a sketch of the complexities and ambiguities that characterise the Art Zone.
Copyright (c) 2019 Roberto Costa
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Copyright (c) 2019 Roberto Costa
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
