Mnemonic Inscriptions: Understanding Melanesian Tattoos in Visual Archives

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This project will study two photographic archives of female tattooing in Papua New Guinea made respectively by a colonial officer (Captain Francis R. Barton) between 1899 and 1908 and by a missionary (Father Xavier Vergés) between 1964-1986. Both visual archives are the only ones of their kind and occupy a central role in understanding a practice that was suppressed in the 1980s and is gradually being reawakened by practitioners today. The aim of this research is to activate, reinterpret and share with communities these two understudied archives by analysing the way they represent the past and to recover Indigenous agencies. By employing a comparative method, photo-elicitation and the activation of social memory, the analysis will include Indigenous contemporary voices as a way to contribute to current debates on colonial archives.