Nieuw-Guineese mannen bouwen een kano before 1936

Curator: This is a drawing titled "Nieuw-Guineese mannen bouwen een kano," or "New Guinean Men Building a Canoe," created by F. Ockerse, sometime before 1936. It’s ink on paper. Artist: The moment I saw it, I thought of storytelling. There's this vibrant, bustling energy... Like peeking into a very specific and personal adventure narrative. A slightly detached adventurer, locals all working away, constructing something. Historian: Yes, and it reflects a prevalent colonial genre of depicting Indigenous peoples engaged in traditional activities. Drawings like these, and particularly ones focused on work, often circulated to reinforce narratives of "development" and to legitimize colonial projects by emphasizing resource extraction. Artist: I suppose. I can't quite switch that off, and step outside of myself to experience this in a pre-critical state of wonder. I just don't have that switch in my DNA! Historian: Absolutely! Consider the artist’s placement – elevated, almost observing, set apart from the canoe builders with that rifle beside him... There's a clear power dynamic portrayed, even unconsciously perhaps. Who is it aimed at and pointed to, really? It asks to be considered. Artist: And there's this kind of flattened perspective. It almost feels like I'm flipping through the pages of a graphic novel, you know? A single moment, rendered in ink... But that makes it immediate. I can see them so very clear. Their focus, what that is meant to show in its core. Historian: Exactly, the use of ink gives a starkness, a documental feel. Though it attempts to depict an “authentic” scene of canoe construction, it's heavily mediated through the artist’s, and by extension, colonial gaze. This is indigenous Americas. This, right here is about context! We have to go back into it all, find it all! Artist: In the best drawings there is truth. What does this artist reveal? Maybe just an interpretation that can start the biggest stories? Even if a dark story, maybe? It is a thing that deserves thinking. A lot. It deserves being written in the heart. Historian: Precisely, seeing is never neutral, and drawings like this offer us a lens not just into the depicted subject, but also into the historical context in which such depictions were made and consumed.