The “Russian Polynesian” Aloi’ Pilioko (Toward the 75th Anniversary)

Abstract

The author casts light on the milestones of life and creative career of the most renowned artist of Oceania the Polynesian Aloisio / Aloï Pilioko. Over the course of years (1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1986), together with Nicolaï Michoutouchkine, he gratuitously presented in the USSR the exhibition “Ethnography and Art of Oceania” from the collection of the N. Michoutouchkine – A. Pilioko Foundation. In 1994, in St. Petersburg, they collaborated with the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropolog and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, in the organization and presentation of the exhibition “Vanuatu in the Mirror of Arts” which was scheduled to commemorate the 14th anniversary of Independence of the Republic of Vanuatu. The article surveys the main themes of the artist’s works (drawings and embroideries), their stylistic specifi cities, and reveals archaic elements in the manner of rendering volumetric objects on the fl at surface, as well as in the hierarchization of images that is expressed through the object dimension. The article is the author’s homage to Aloï Pilioko’s 75th anniversary; the artist was born on June 11, 1935, in Wallis Island.