86
FIG. 9 (below): Shark tooth
weapon.
Hawai’i. 18th century.
Wood, shark teeth, fi ber. H: 32 cm.
Mark Blackburn Collection.
FIG. 8: Fan, pe’ahi niu.
Hawai’i. Early 19th century.
Human hair, coconut midribs and
leafl ets, dyed fi ber. W: 58.4 cm.
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA,
inv. E5354.
ART ON VIEW
the Society, Austral, and Cook Islands. A fi nal
section, “Divine Chiefs,” considers the relationship
of Hawaiian chiefs as divine embodiments
of the vitality associated with abundance and a
prosperous environment that ensured growth
and life. Focusing on these distinct groups as anchor
points, the exhibition explores the ways in
which Polynesians distilled these core principles
of divine agency as they migrated across the region
over the course of several thousand years.
The notion of divine and sacred light is captured
and celebrated in a remarkable shimmering
female Tongan fi gure (’otua fefi ne). An iconic
work carved from the single tooth of a sperm
whale, it is one of the great masterworks of the
Rockefeller Collection at The Met (fi g. 3). Brilliance
and shimmer were prerequisites for ritual
effi cacy specifi cally because they referred back
to the potent threshold associated with ancestors
and divine origins. The ancestral homeland,
or dwelling place of the gods, was a potent site
that fi gured in many islander traditions as a dark
underworld. In Tonga, this watery realm was
known as Pulotu. Associated with the night and
with things invisible and unknown, Pulotu was
accessible via portals found in deep pools and
hidden cave interiors. As the dwelling place of
ancestral spirits, it was also deemed an important
point of origin and a source for spiritually
“hot,” or charged (tapu), natural materials.
Islanders privileged certain species of plants,
birds, and marine life—those understood to have
originated in the ancestral realm—as capable of
creating the dynamic connections necessary to
communicate with the gods, and this is where
the extraordinary materiality of Polynesian art
comes so powerfully into play. The incorporation
of coconut cord fi ber, whale ivory, or the
wood of the sacred vesi tree into complex woven
works and fi gural sculpture activated Polynesians’
relationship with the ancestors, for these
materials contained within them something of
the essence and raw vitality of the ancestral domain.
Whales in particular were deemed to be
shadows or embodiments (ata) of the fi rst creator
god, Tangaloa, who presided over the sacred
realm of the ocean. Shaped and polished
into spectacular breastplates or carved into female
fi gurines and housed in portable shrines,
whale ivory was not only the rarest of commodities,
it was a sacred relic—the divine essence of
Tangaloa condensed and fused into bone that
therefore served as an ideal conduit for the gods.
A dynamic Hawaiian sculpture (’otua fefi ne),
on loan to the exhibition from The Field Museum
in Chicago, is one of only six such wooden
female fi gures known to exist (fi g. 2a).2 Long associated
with the deity Hikule’o, the sculpture
may have been a vehicle through which this formidable
deity manifested herself in the physical
realm. Hikule’o (who can take both male and
female forms) was said to guard the entrance to
Pulotu,3 the dark, watery realm of the ancestors.
In her ritual role as mediator, Hikule’o bridged