Drawing a line in the sand: 'Sandroing' brings traditional Vanuatu art form to Museum of International Folk Art

'Sandroing' brings traditional Vanuatu art form to Museum of International Folk Art

Jul 16, 2025

Lines in the sand tell a story at the Museum of International Folk Art.

The exhibit “Sandroing: Tracing Kastom in Vanuatu” was created by Edgar Hinge, a sand drawing artist from Port Vila, Vanuatu.

“He’s originally from Pentecost Island, and he is a master in the practice of sand drawing,” curator Felicia Katz-Harris said. “Which requires an immense amount of knowledge and skill, because they have to be able to relay a story.”

Sandroing is the art of tracing lines into a thin layer of sand or other similar material like ash to tell a story. Hinge, while visiting Santa Fe, drew out the designs, which museum workers then maintained for the exhibit.

“They developed this very delicate technique of misting the sand drawing after Edgar created it with a solution that fixed the sand,” Katz-Harris said, “so that we were able to safely move it as we were preparing for the exhibition.”

A focus was placed on preserving these pieces, helping spread the tradition and art of sandroing.

“Traditionally, after a story is told, the sand drawing is erased. So, it was very important to Edgar that we were able to fix it,” Katz-Harris said. “Even though that’s contradictory to the tradition, because he wanted to primarily share it with our Santa Fe audiences.”

Hinge works at Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta and National Museum, which the Museum of International Folk Art collaborated with to share a slice of Vanuatu culture.

“I think it’s a really special opportunity that we have to share this tradition with our visitors,” Katz-Harris said.

Katz-Harris said, as far as they know, “this is the first exhibition that’s specifically on the Vanuatu sand drawings that’s in a museum outside of Melanesia.”

One drawing on display tells the story of respect and another tells of the Ni-Vanuatu ritual of land diving, according to Katz-Harris. All the sandroings on display are accompanied by a video showing Hinge creating them and telling the story depicted.

“It’s a wonderful way for us to help people learn about Vanuatu because there’s so much content and context that you can learn from these sand drawings,” Katz-Harris said. “It communicates so much about the way of life and the way of being and religion and ritual and ceremony and family.”

While most of the works tell the stories of the Ni-Vanuatu, Hinge also focused on the story of the collaboration between the two museums.

“Edgar created this story about our collaboration. And talks about what it meant to him to participate in this collaboration. He talks about the drawings themselves as being a visual evidence of a history,” Katz-Harris said.

“He refers to this collaboration drawing as like a traditional contract, and so the sand drawing is like the contract between the institutions, and it’s a very special story, and we feature that in the exhibition.”