Click photo to enlarge
Cook Islands artist Mahiriki Tangaroa. Photo supplied.
Click photo to enlarge
'At the time', by Mahiriki Tangaroa.
Burning gods and battling Christians: it's all in a
day's work for a Cook Islands artist. Nigel Benson meets
Mahiriki Tangaroa.
Sometimes art is more than art.
For Mahiriki Tangaroa, it is the last bastion in a nation's
fight to defend its cultural identity.
Tangaroa exhibits regularly in New Zealand and Rarotonga and
will hold her first exhibition in Dunedin, "Mangoes in the
Morning", at Gallery De Novo this week.
"'Mangoes in the Morning' metaphorically refers to the
critical importance of maintaining traditional customary
practices," she says.
"To revive an acknowledgement of our history and return to
our customary practices - that's what I'm trying to achieve.
The title also alludes to an impressionable small island
nation challenged by the pressures of globalisation and the
questionable bid to accept change at the expense of
relinquishing indigenous rite."
Tangaroa uses the islands' gods as a metaphor for their
cultural erosion.
"I started looking at traditional gods four years ago. When I
first went there in '95, there was nothing in the museum
about those old gods.
"It was like they had never existed," she says.
"The arrival of Christianity in the islands in 1821 had a big
impact on our traditional gods. They were burned by the
missionaries, with the approval of the locals.
"There's a large population of Christians in the Cook
Islands. But my work seems to have touched on something they
would prefer to have forgotten.
"The dismembered and distorted images of the gods represent
the erosion of traditional beliefs," she says.
"We produce all these tikis for the tourism market - little
tikis, medium tikis and big tikis. This is a god we once
worshipped now being subject to commercial exploitation.
"Many artists there produce for the tourism market, rather
than expressing themselves. There is a social pressure to
adapt to Western ways. But we don't really have to.
"A lot of people now shop in the supermarket rather than
growing their food in a plantation. But how does that affect
our relationship to the land and how does it change us as
people?
"I like to address and challenge aspects of island culture
from the social, religious and political landscape. It is
these underlying forces that inevitably establish the social
values in Cook Islands society today."
Tangaroa was born in Auckland and moved to Christchurch with
her family when she was 2.
She emigrated to Rarotonga 10 years ago, when she was 24.
"Having lived a Western life and then going to the islands, I
really appreciated what they have there. Yet they want what
we have here."
Rarotonga has a population of around 9000, while the Cook
Islands totals 18,000"Over the last 12 years, the Cook
Islands have suffered the effects of depopulation, which has
not only affected the continuity of traditional practices but
has created a forum for increased foreign settlement,"
Tangaroa says.
"A lot of Cook Islanders are leaving to come to New Zealand
and Australia."
Tangaroa (34) graduated from the University of Canterbury
with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1997 and returned to
the Cook Islands, her parents' homeland, in 1998.
"Rarotonga is a great place to paint. The light there is very
bright and you've got a lot of time on your hands.
"They operate on `island time', which means, basically, you
get around to doing something when you get around to doing
it," she says.
