ABSTRACT
Vanuatu's sand-drawings are complex geometric designs made from a single uninterrupted line that begins and ends at the same point, creating a self-enclosed form. This chapter suggests that a sand-drawing's 'beauty' is momentarily apparent in its creation and evanescence, because these conditions manifest its lived, relational qualities; qualities that reveal and recreate bonds that are important to the continuity of Paama Island's agnatic clans. From the point of view of a sand-drawer or observer, evanescence, the ebb and flow of a sand-drawing's making and unmaking, is as significant, if not more significant, than its finished form. However, some sand-drawings feature extruding lines, seemingly contradicting the ideal that they should be completed in a single fluid movement. Each sand-drawing is surfeit with the personal recollections of the young men who create them; young men who evince the presence of their predecessors and the way knowledge of who they are and where they come from was passed to them.
