Zack Petersen

By cutting out the middle man and bringing Kamoro art to Jakarta, Kal Muller is able to give artists an opportunity they might otherwise not have. (Photo: Zack Petersen, JG)

Papua Finds An Unlikely Patron For Its Traditional Art

Carvings, spears and paintings line the dark rooms of the Swiss ambassador’s residence in South Jakarta, and the yellow sunlight spilling in from the floor-to-ceiling windows is incandescent on their edges.

A number of people have been invited to browse this collection of Kamoro art, which was brought from Papua to Jakarta by Kal Muller.

Most of them stare for a few seconds at the works, as if trying to decipher their hidden meaning, before reaching down for the price tags.

When Muller talks, you can’t help but listen. The 70-year-old had been everywhere: sailed the Pacific, smoked peyote with the Huichol Indians of Mexico. And he’s done everything: written a dozen books, worked for the US State Department and published photos and articles in the glossy pages of National Geographic.

Muller talks with his hands as much as his mouth, his eyebrows arch when things get intense, and he rubs his thumb across the kneel of his jaw sawing a week-old salt-and-pepper beard.

The stories he tells are from places most people have never seen. He’s climbed mountainsides that no one has bothered to name and paddled canoes down rivers that aren’t on maps.

Muller looks 50, tops. He moves too quickly to be 70. One minute he’s sitting on top of a 1.2-meter crocodile carved by the Kamoro of Papua, the next he’s digging out textbooks he’s written about Papua for Indonesian schoolchildren.

He’s dark from decades in the sun, he’s completely ignored the top button on his collared shirt and his black earring is impossible to miss as he kneels down next to another Kamoro carving.

Muller has been around the world, he’s seen more than 80 countries, and since 1976, he’s called Indonesia home.

Born in Hungary and in possession of a PhD in French Literature, the fact that Muller speaks English without an accent and reels off impeccable Indonesian is a jealous pill to swallow.

His confidence and language ability could stem from his time as an interpreter, or filming documentaries, or could simply be something essential to dealing in traditional tribal art.

But dealing in tribal art is a touchy subject. One critics are quick to pick apart until they can find a flaw. They question the motives of simply taking these carvings and selling them so that society ladies have something from Papua to prop against a wall. Muller said his work was funded by Freeport, one of the world’s biggest mining facilities.

“So I thought up this program and Freeport’s financing it,” says Muller. “Essentially what I do — for this program, I visit all the Kamoro villages at least once a year, I buy carvings at a relatively low price, when I sell the carvings, I go back to the village and I give them their money.”

Muller’s got it down to a science.

“Let’s say this carving is selling for Rp 650,000 [$65]. I pay Rp 150,000. If it sells, the guy gets Rp 500,000. He couldn’t sell this for Rp 150,000 if his soul depended on it. In the village, no one would by it, in Timika, which is two days away by outboard motor, there’s a few souvenir shops, they wouldn’t pay him that.”

Freeport, he says, pays for all the shipping from Papua to Jakarta or the Kamoro gallery in Kuta, Bali.

“I was originally hired by Freeport to ghost-write a book about Freeport. ‘Grasbeturg,’ ” Muller says.

“When I finished, Freeport asked me to stay on as a consultant. Most of my life, I’ve worked with traditional groups, the Huicol Indians, some tribes in Africa, South America, the South Pacific, Vanuatu — it’s not called Vanuatu now — so naturally I gravitated to them. I visited their villages, and sooner or later, I thought of something to help,” he says.

“Freeport’s got a lot of different programs to help both the Kamoro and the Amumba, the two tribes on whose land they’re on. Both some of the programs are efficient; some aren’t, they waste a lot of money, but my budget is small.”

Muller says he is not in it for the money, but is seeking to instill pride in the Kamoro.

“When the Dutch came in 1925, the Dutch and the Catholics came in a year later, they were against their traditional life. The Kamoro were semi-nomadic hunter-gathers. Free spirits are hard to gather. So the Kamoro lost a great deal of pride in their own culture,” he says.

“When outsiders take interest in their culture, this pride tends to return. Partially. They’ll never be as proud as, say, the Central Javanese. The Central Javanese, it was never beaten out of them. The dancing, the wayang , that’s perfectly acceptable, where as for the Kamoro, for a long time, it was not acceptable.”

But you can’t just go into a place and tell people you’re more than happy to export their traditional carvings. There has to be a relationship. That’s what Muller has with the Kamoro. He’s been working with them for 15 years now.

So instead of traveling around the world, Muller is writing about it. Papua specifically.

“I’m publishing a series of books on Papua especially for schools. There’s nothing on Papuans for Papuans. They learn about Maja Paket and Swijaya but not about Papua.”

Papua is know for it’s traditional art. Muller knows that. He must have told the story of Michael Rockefeller a thousand times. But he’ll tell it a thousand times more if it means helping the Kamoro.

“The Asmat became well-known because it’s said — and I don’t think it’s true — but it’s said that they killed and ate a young man named Michael Rockefeller. I think he drowned, but that’s something else. That really put the Asmat on the map, cause his father came, 50 reporters came, and then he had been collecting Asmat art and that made Asmat art famous.

“The Kamoro, who live right next door, who I think have art just as good as the Asmat, are not known. I’m making it my job to try and promote the Kamoro carvings and the Kamoro culture in general.”

So if Muller’s work doesn’t put the Kamoro on the map, is there a more dramatic way to tap into the traditional art scene?

He says: “I tell the Kamoro that I’m not famous enough, but on the Freeport board of commissioners is Henry Kissinger, former American secretary of state. So I tell the Kamoro, ‘You can be famous if you kill and eat Henry Kissinger.’ ”

Why not just take a bite out of Kal Muller?

“I’m not famous enough to kill and eat.”

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