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Tapa dance skirt collected on the island of Futuna in the 50s-60s. Tapa is the first fabric available in the Pacific. Its uses were varied: clothes, shrouds, blankets, mosquito nets, bags, prestige money. Tapas from the Wallis and Futuna region are made from the bark of the paper mulberry. The bast from the bark is extracted and left to ret before being threshed and dried. The bark is struck using a mallet or tapa beater which packs the fibers and welds them together. The patterns drawn abstractly and symbolically evoke important events, ancestral myths and legends. In Europe, the tapa is to be considered as a painting that we put on the wall. Beaten bark and natural pigments.
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