Magazines - Tribal Art Spring 2009

By Bérénice Geoffroy-Schneiter

Introduction
Some exhibitions seem to be manifestos. Mangareva: Panthéon de Polynésie, which explores the cultural and religious patrimony of the tiny island of Mangareve in the heart of the Gambier Islands archipelago, is one such exhibition. Imagine just a dozen or so objects, some modest—a pounder, an adze, a fishhook—and other more spectacular ones, such as altar objects and effigies of the island’s deities. Together these share the distinction of being the quiet survivors of a scoffed-at and ruined civilization, and hold the memory of customs that were annihilated in the middle of the nineteenth century by a handful of European missionaries. Now spread out across the world from New York to Paris, by way of Rome and London, these objects have been reunited in a joint project by the Musée du Quai Branly and the Musée de Tahiti et des Iles for as long as this ephemeral exhibition is on display—first in Paris and then just outside Papeete.
These works relate a remarkable story of human and material tragedy. Curated by Philippe Peltier and Tara Hiquily, the exhibition carries as much impact as it does importance. Above and beyond any discourse in cultural anthropological (who are these gods really and what role did these effigies play in ritual life?), a distinctive Mangarevan aesthetic is revealed. Obviously, it owes much to a greater Polynesian canon but it speaks its own language, a subtle mixture of naturalism and stylization unique to this island, whose lovely name apparently means “the mountain where reva grows” (an allusion to a species of the curcuma plant, which there once represented a promise of pleasure and fertility).