Ancestral Canoe 2024

A collaboration with Alson Kelen, Master Navigator of The Marshall Islands.

Alson Rinamli of Bikini is a wayfinder and traditional sailor. He is immersed in sea voyaging and the building of canoes. This artwork refers to the reverence he holds for Marshallese culture, centred and signified by sea knowledge and voyaging.

The sculpture is in four elements – a symbiotic relationship of voyaging, navigation and cultural history. The Marshallese canoe has one main float and an outrigger always placed to the east of the main hull. To tack into the wind or ‘go about’, the traditional sailor transfers the base of the mast by walking it to the other end of the main hull. The craft doesn’t ‘go about’ but just travels in the opposite direction with the outrigger hull again to the East.

For this ancestral canoe, Alson commissioned three women elders to weave the sail using plant vine like materials – a traditional method. What is remarkable is that as the wind blows stronger the ‘weave’ opens up allowing the wind to pass through the sail, moderating its strength. The elders use the same technology in their making of this sail.

The vertical stick structure refers to navigation. These stick maps were used to place the atolls within the larger map of the Pacific Ocean. The atolls of Bikini and Rongelap are placed in the far-left side of the stick structure. Other atolls can also be identified within the stick map. Usually, these stick maps were laid flat and used to navigate from one atoll to another. An atoll is usually 30+ miles across making the far side invisible to the naked eye. As each Atoll is often 80+ miles from another, the wayfinding or navigation was essential to our Pacific way of living and travelling across the Ocean.

The main hull in a real canoe is made from one tree, hollowed out. They could be over 80ft in length. On the front of the sculpture the ‘mast’ fits into a wooden block – there would be one each end of the canoe hull allowing for the mast to sit into the block when the mast was walked to the other end of the hull for changing direction. The smaller hull would always be to the east of the main hull.

At the base of the sculpture is another pattern of sticks. These visually show the passage of the Pacific swell – the most important navigational tool, especially during the day when navigation was not possible using the stars. Around the Marshall Islands the swell of the sea always travels east to west, and by feeling the passage of these ‘waves’ which have travelled often a thousand miles the navigator on the tiller (traditionally an oar) would travel in any direction keeping the swell at the same point to the canoe.