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Author Jacobs, Karen, author

Title This is not a grass skirt : on fibre skirts (liku) and female tattooing (veiqia) in nineteenth century Fiji / Karen Jacobs
Published Leiden : Sidestone Press, 2019

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Intro; Acknowledgements; Notes; Glossary; Fibre Skirts, Tattooing and the Museum; Liku and veiqia; This is not a grass skirt; Skirts, clothing and the body in the Pacific; The museum and the archive; Liku and veiqia: sources; Veiqia: 'collecting' tattooing; Limitations and aims; Liku, Veiqia and the Adorned Body; Gendering the body; Rite of passage; Wrapping in status; Assemblage; Collecting Liku and Veiqia; Difference: liku, veiqia and early visitors; Domesticity: clothing transformations, 1830s-1860s; Curiosity: colonial bodies, 1860-1880s; Classifying Liku and Veiqia
Liku: lost in translationVeiqia as museum objects; On Separations and Connections; Veiqia: not merely museum objects; Re-awakening: The Veiqia Project; Making visible, making heard, making sense; Beginnings; List of Illustrations and credit lines; Bibliography; Lege pagina
Summary The Pacific 'grass skirt' has provoked debates about the demeaning and sexualised depiction of Pacific bodies. While these stereotypical portrayals associated with 'nakedness' are challenged in this book, the complex uses and meanings of the garments themselves are examined, including their link to other body adornments and modifications. In nineteenth-century Fiji, beautiful fibre skirts (liku) in a great variety of shapes and colours were lifetime companions for women. First fitted around puberty when she received her veiqia (tattooing), women's successive liku were adapted at marriage and during maternity, performing a multiplicity of social functions. This book is based on a systematic investigation of previously understudied liku in museum collections around the world. Through the prism of one garment, multiple ways of looking at dress are considered, including their classification in museums and archives. Also highlighted are associated tattooing (veiqia) practices, perceptions of modesty, the intricacies of intercultural encounters and the significance of collections and cultural heritage today. 0The book is intended for those interested in often neglected women's objects and practices in the Pacific, in dress and adornment more generally and in the use of museum collections and archives. It is richly illustrated with rare and previously unpublished paintings and drawings, as well as many examples of liku themselves
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO; viewed November 22, 2019)
Subject Women's clothing -- Social aspects -- Fiji
Women's clothing -- Fiji -- History
Skirts -- Fiji
Skirts
Women's clothing
Fiji
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9789088908149
9088908141