This moai kavakava was carved by the Rapanui artist Arsenio Gonzalo Tuki Tepano, also known by the name of ‘Pika’. He was born in Rapa Nui in 1932 where he was also interned in the local settlement for those afflicted by Hansen’s disease (leprosy) from the 1950s to 1960.

According to archival documents stored at the Ethnologisches Museum – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, this carving was purchased by the German artist Horst Jeimke, a resident in Chile, and donated to the museum by his wife Iris Zedlitz-Jeimke in 1982. The married couple lived in Rapa Nui between 1981 and 1986, where they both organized art workshops [Jeimke received the name ‘Manu’ (bird) from his Rapanui friends]. In a letter to the former director of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, Horst Jeimke introduced himself as a friend of Gonzalo Tuki Tepano and notes that 'A.G. Tuki Tepano would be pleased if his Rapanui carving would be stored in the museum’.

Horst Jeimke died in 2002, in La Unión, Chile. Due to this fact, we could not gather any further information concerning his exchange/relationship with Gonzalo Tuki Tepano. However, we know that Tuki Tepano left the island during the 1990s.

Bibliography

Zentralarchiv Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Gonzalo Tuki Tepano, VI 54214–1982, Signature: 3 B/1982: 13.

Biographical information collected by Diego Muñoz and Cristián Moreno Pakarati.