Resource Spotlight | “Oceania: The Shape of Time” by Maia Nuku
Oceania
The Shape of Time
by Maia Nuku
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The visual arts of Oceania tell a wealth of dynamic stories about origins, ancestral power, performance, and initiation. This publication explores the deeply rooted connections between Austronesian-speaking peoples, whose ancestral homelands span Island Southeast Asia, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the island archipelagoes of the northern and eastern Pacific. Unlike previous books, it foregrounds Indigenous perspectives, alongside multidisciplinary research in art history, ethnography, and archaeology to provide an intimate look at Oceania, its art, and its culture. Stunning new photography highlights more than 130 magnificent objects, ranging from elaborately carved ancestral figures in ceremonial houses, towering slit drums, and dazzling turtle-shell masks to polished whale ivory breastplates. Underscoring the powerful interplay between the ocean and its islands and the ongoing connection with spiritual and ancestral realms, Oceania: The Shape of Time presents an art-focused approach to life and culture while guiding readers through the artistic achievements of Islanders across millennia.
Maia Nuku
Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art
Maia Nuku was born in London and is of English and Maori (Ngai Tai) descent. Maia's doctoral research focused on eighteenth century collections of Polynesian art and she completed two post-doctoral fellowships at Cambridge University (2008–2014) as part of an international research team exploring Oceanic collections in major European institutions. Her first exhibition at The Met On Country: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan-Levi Gift (2017) focused on the ways in which ancestral connections are expressed in contemporary Aboriginal art. Her most recent exhibition, Atea: Nature and Divinity in Polynesian Art (2018–2019) centered indigenous Pacific perspectives to explore the close material and genealogical networks that bind Polynesian gods and chiefs with Nature.
To learn more about the related exhibition, please visit our past feature below.
The Shape of Time: Art and Ancestors of Oceania from the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the National Museum of Qatar
Sacred Figure (Yene)
19th–early 20th century
Indonesia, Leti Islands, Maluku Tenggara
Wood
Gift of Fred and Rita Richman, 1987
1987.453.5
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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