The temporary exhibition “Kanak. L’Art est une Parole” at Musée du Quai Branly is shaped as a typical Kanak’s Big House : at the entrace there are wooden statues evoking ancestor’s presence among inhabitants, while the background the flute sound means the world interpretation before word. In the circular path of the exhibition statues are the gates through sections, which are named with word or figure in ajië language, one of the 28th officials.
The exhibition is structured in a contrast between “faces and reflects”, “némèè ma komèè”, which are the double face of the same reality.
Némèè, the “face”, recalls to their image and the one shown. This is the Kanak cultural ground. In the exposition there are five faces which represents the five fundamental principles, grounds their world view and drives their actions: the verb and the word, the Big House and its country, the Taro (a kind of potato) and the wood, the Ancestors and the genius, the persons and the relates.
Komèè, the “reflect”, tells about the Kanak’s world as seen by others, by Westerns and France overall: “you know about yourself through the external vision of yourself” says Emanuel Kasarhérou, researcher charged to the overseas mission. Each Kanak confronts with his reflect: the Enlightment, the scientific description, the colonial propaganda, the reappropriation of their own image, the persistence of the word.
Since the faces are located out of time to express the Kanak’s culture endurance, the reflects occurs one after one chronologically, showing the evolution of their perception through history. At the end of the exhibition, faces and reflections will meet each others in the present time.