OTUFELENITE TONGAN COMMUNITY GROUP

This 24’L x 16’W Ngatu (tapa) was the culmination of the project called: Pieces of Cloth, Pieces of Culture: Tapa from Tonga and the Pacific Islands. The project manager was Dr. Ping-Ann Addo, and the piece was created through a collaboration between the ‘Otufelenite Tongan Community Group, the California College of the Arts, and the California Academy of Sciences.

The following is from:

http://www.cca.edu/center/academicopportunities/ao_vs_tapa.html

Tapa
In Tonga, tapa-making is a group activity that is exclusive to women. Tapa has many contemporary ceremonial uses including as red carpets for chiefs, dance costumes, mats and blankets, and for wrapping ancestral remains.

The tapa created for the project was made with all natural materials imported from Tonga. The women artists used wooden mallets to beat thin strips of bark from the paper mulberry tree into wide, soft, workable sheets. The pieces were then joined together using a root paste to create a 16 x 24 foot tapa cloth. The large white cloth was placed over pattern boards made of dried leaves and their midribs, and then rubbed with natural dyes. Lastly, the women painted culturally significant motifs onto the cloth using a blackish-brown dye.

Artists
From October 2003 to April 2004, Siu Tuita – accomplished tapa artist, musician, composer and dancer, artistically guided 12 Bay Area Tongan women tapa-makers. The artists had all moved away from their home islands many years ago and have long been resident in overseas communities. For some of the women, it had been many years since they had made tapa, for others it was their first opportunity to be involved in the entire tapa-making process.

Dr. Ping-Ann Addo:

Cultural Anthropologist and researcher of Polynesian culture, Ping-Ann Addo, PhD joined the California College of the Arts community for the 2003-04 academic year as the Center’s Visiting Scholar. Dr. Addo earned her PhD in Anthropology at Yale University where she researched Tongan diaspora, culture and arts. At CCA, she taught courses on Anthropology of Art and Arts of the Pacific through CCA’s Diversity Studies Program. She served as the Project Manager for Pieces of Cloth, Pieces of Culture for which she organized cloth-making demonstrations, panel discussions, lectures and special ceremonies. Dr. Addo also curated an exhibition of tapa from the California Academy of Sciences and the CCA tapa cloth at the Oakland Crafts and Cultural Arts Gallery. Additionally, she published an accompanying, full-length exhibition catalog entitled Pieces of Cloth, Pieces of Culture: Tapa from Tonga and the Pacific Islands. Dr. Addo was also Associate Producer of the recently completed DVD documentary, "Pieces of Cloth, Pieces of Culture: Tapa-Making and Community Collaboration. Dr. Addo is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

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