Atea: Nature and Divinity in Polynesia

Abstract

Reviewed by: Atea: Nature and Divinity in Polynesia Maia Nuku Atea: Nature and Divinity in Polynesia. Exhibition, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1911 2018–27 10 2019. Exhibition catalogue available at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Atea_Nature_and_Divinity_in_Polynesia. For additional details, see the exhibition website at https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/atea-nature-and-divinity-in-polynesia. This earth glows the color of my skin sunburnt natives didn't fly from far away but sprouted whole through velvet taro in the sweet mud of this ' āina[land] —Haunani-Kay Trask, "Ko'olauloa" ( Light in the Crevice Never Seen[1994], 80–81) Atea: Nature and Divinity in Polynesiawas a project that looked to foreground Indigenous perspectives by exploring the genealogical relationship between Polynesian chiefs and their gods. I called the exhibition [End Page 601] Ateato ground it firmly in Polynesian cosmology, and more precisely in that powerful moment when space and light (atea) flooded the dark ancestral night (te pō), initiating a dynamic new era in which strings of islands were vigorously birthed into being and the first generation of gods was born. The focus of the exhibition was to highlight the singular materiality of high-status ritual items created for the most powerful chiefs (ariki/ali'i), who descended from these gods (atua) and were imbued with their spiritual essence (mana). Prestigious items such as sumptuous feather cloaks, breast-plates and headdresses, whalebone and ivory gods—I hoped to delve deeply into the unique aesthetics of these rare Polynesian things and draw out the conceptual significance of the valuable materials incorporated into them. Natural fibers, iridescent pearl shell, glossy black feathers, and the red-tipped tail feathers of the tropic bird (tavake)—each material has its own set of associations and stories to tell. It was these vital resources, marshaled from the natural world, that enhanced the personal and spiritual efficacy of chiefs precisely because each asserted a close genealogical connection with one's divine fore-bears. The relationship with divinity was never an abstract notion for Islanders; rather, it found its roots in the bones, feathers, and plant fibers of the islands and ocean from which the gods once sprang. The exhibition featured some thirty works, dating from the late eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, which were grouped in three major clusters: (a) Fiji, Tonga, and Niue in the west; (b) Tahiti, Mangareva, and the Austral and Cook Islands to their east; and (c) the Hawaiian Islands in the north. Focusing on these three distinct archipelagoes as anchor points for the entire region, the exhibition's design reinforced a west to east to north trajectory as a way to explore how Polynesians distilled the coordinates of their unique conceptual landscape over the course of two thousand years. Indeed, the installation was designed to underscore the serial evolution of ideas and philosophies across space and time. The prevalence of the crescent shape, the interaction of vertical and horizontal indices, and a directional relationship with space (vā) with time (tā)—all of these find their full expression in the ritual regalia worn and wielded by Polynesian chiefs. I wanted to underscore the material expression of these ideas in different parts of Polynesia by establishing a strong visual dynamic in the exhibition—one that created sight lines and established links and affinities between carefully juxtaposed groupings of distinct yet interrelated artworks from right across the region. I worked closely with Met exhibition designer Fabiana Weinberg and graphics designer Alexandre Viault on concept and schematic designs for the exhibition, and they helped me to realize a visual execution of these ideas. A first section, "Ancestral Homelands," examined the potency of sacred sites, including Pulotu, a realm associated with darkness and the night, with things invisible and unknown; the section explored Pulotu's significance as a point of origin as well as return. A second section, "Propping Up the Gods," explored the conceptual underpinnings [End Page 602]of Taputapuatea (meaning vast and sacred light), the most extensive ritual precinct in central Polynesia. Located on the island of Ra'iatea and said to be the birthplace of the gods, it features monumental stone temples—described literally as the "jawbones" of...