Mixed Japanese, Reunionese, Javanese, Kanak and German, Aimé Nangard, born in 1954 in Port-Vila, arrived at 13 years old in Caledonia. In his “adopted country”, he made a career with CAFAT. He then spends his nights painting. Discover his portrait in Uncommon Fates.
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A small room filled with colors amid the cries of birds. The gallery that Aimé Nangard built himself exudes calm and creativity. “I only use bright colors, it reflects how I feel, I am retired and happy, it shows in my paintings.” In a corner of the gallery, a painting of Le Saut du Gol and a pig’s tooth recalls the birthplace of Aimé Nangard, 69 years ago. “I was born in the New Hebrides, and I care regarding it, sometimes I’m told I’m from Vanuatu, I’m sorry, but I’m from the New Hebrides.” The eldest son of the family, he was sent to New Caledonia at the age of thirteen. “It was hard, suddenly finding yourself in boarding school, but that was how it was at the time, several families sent their elders to study in Caledonia.” Little by little, he adapts, until he meets love during his studies and decides to start a family in Caledonia with the one he married 46 years ago. The couple moved to Mont-Koghi in 1976, a place then without running water and electricity. “We built everything on this land, it’s our little paradise, today we feel part of the municipality of Dumbéa, but above all Koghis.”
Silence Around Family History
Another affiliation claimed by Aimé Nangard: French nationality, requested by his father for the whole family in 1961. “I have three pieces of ID, explains the painter, I first called myself Nakanrakari, the name of my Japanese paternal grandfather, then the first name of this same grandfather became our new family name finally, in 1961, we were given the name of Nangard, I don’t know why.” This mystery, it is not only on his name that Aimé Nangard observes it, but on the whole of his family history. A past rich in interbreeding, but also in difficult episodes, such as the deportation of three older brothers of his father to camps for Japanese prisoners in Australia during the Second World War. It is finally Carmina Nangard, Aimé’s wife, who has been devoting her free time for years to researching the family genealogy, but also her own. “My father didn’t speak either, he is a Spanish exile from the Franco period, these are painful stories.”
Travels and paintings
For Aimé Nangard, expression ultimately passes more through painting than through speech. “I then return to my world, when I was still employed, I even had to set an alarm clock at two in the morning to stop and go to bed, because I am cut off from everything when I paint.” Self-taught, it is from photographs or travel memories that Aimé Nangard creates his paintings. “But I am free, I mix the inspirations, I do according to the desire of the moment.” The fact remains that the Pacific and its cultures can be found there, on the walls of the gallery of Aimé Nangard, who today only dreams of one thing: “drinking my coffee in the morning then spending my time painting, surrounded by my family, on the heights of the Koghis, that’s happiness.”
Discover this episode as well as all the others of Destins peu Communs, the program that sets out to meet our identities (radio broadcast on Tuesdays at 12:17 p.m. and rebroadcast on Sundays at 12:20 p.m.).
