Preview article on Rapa Nui - Easter Island - Tribal Art magazine - Issue 95 - Spring 2020

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EASTER ISLAND

ART on view

By Adeline Aumont

The Île de Pâques: le nombril du monde? (Easter Island: Navel of the World?) exhibition represents an effort to build bridges between the natural history and ethnological collections that are the dual strengths of the Muséum de La Rochelle (fig. 1).

The show was conceived of and produced by Muséum de Toulouse and adapted by the Muséum de La Rochelle. The job of managing the presentation was given to Nicolas Cauwe, curator of the departments of Prehistory and Oceania at the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire in Brussels. With sixteen years of experience in research and excavation work on Easter Island behind him, Cauwe develops innovative hypotheses in the show that sometimes con-

Navel of the World? tradict ideas that have prevailed until now. Through the display of exceptional objects, the show offers a didactic, highly informative, and exciting overview of Easter Island, its culture, and its evolution over time.

SO NEAR, YET SO FAR The first Western encounter with Easter Island in 1722 by Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen marked the beginning of a new era for the inhabitants of this island, the place most remote from any other inhabited land mass in the world. Genetic, linguistic, and archaeological studies have provided a corpus of facts that indicate it was first inhabited by people of Polynesian origin between AD 600–800 or between AD 1000–1200.

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The peoples of Oceania had seafaring capabilities and nautical technologies that were unique for the time. These made use of a navigational science based on the memorization of natural phenomena (constellations, sea swells, etc.) aided by a type of map developed in the Marshall Islands consisting of interlink sticks marked with pieces of coral or shell.

TITANS AND MEN Easter Island owes much of its renown to the many great stone heads, or moai, that are found on it. The most famous ones were aligned along great altars (ahu). They represent deified ancestors that ensured protection and population control. A tuff moai head (fig. 2) that was brought to Europe by the Franco-Belgian Métraux-Lavachery Expedition of 1934– 1935 is included in the show. It is one of the few moai ever to have left Easter Island. The exhibition also provides an opportunity to view a large variety of the beautifully executed wooden sculptures from the island, including the moai kavakava figures that represent emaciated-looking individuals with their ribs and backbones protruding. They are believed to be representations of spirits called aku aku or varua, and their skeletal appearance is thought to be a reference to the framework of the world.

One of the cornerstone pieces of the Muséum de La Rochelle’s Easter Island collections is a moai kavakava that is unique because it has two heads (fig. 4).

The bicephalism could be a reference to the twins that founded the human lineages in the Easter Islanders’ mythology. A second moai (fig. 5) is one of the oldest moai kavakava known and was collected around 1830–1832 by the commander of a Nantes-based FIG. 1 (above left): Installation view at the Muséum de La Rochelle. © Julien Chauvet, city of La Rochelle.

FIG. 2 (above): Head of a statue, moai. Te Peu site, Easter Island.

Before the 17th century.

Tuff.

Collected by the Franco-Belge Expedition, 1934–1935.

Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, inv. ET.35.5.88. © MRAH, Brussels.

FIG. 3 (left): Fragment of hair cordage.

Easter Island.

Hair.

Muséum de La Rochelle, inv. MHNLR – H.2851. Donated by Stephen Chauvet, 1936.

This fragment was part of a cord that went around the rongorongo tablet known as the “échancrée” (notched), which is now at the Musée de Tahiti et des Îles. The tablet was collected by a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary that was present on the island in 1869.

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ART ON VIEW

FIGS. 4a–c (right): Two-headed figure, moai kavakava. Easter Island.

Wood (Sophora toromiro), bone, obsidian.

Collected by Navy surgeon Marine Ferdinand Gille, 1860–1866.

Muséum de La Rochelle, inv. MHNLR - H.1529. © Lézard graphique-MHNLR and Romain Vincent-MHNLR.

FIG. 5 (below): Figure, moai kavakava.

Easter Island.

Wood, fiber (bark, probably from Hibiscus tiliaceus).

Brought to Europe by whaling ship Captain Thébaud of Nantes, 1830–1832.

Muséum de La Rochelle, inv. MHNLR - H.614. © Francis Giraudon-MHNLR.

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ART ON VIEW

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RAPA NUI

FIG. 6 (left): Bird-man figure, moai tangata moko. Easter Island. 16th–17th century.

Wood (Sophora toromiro), coral, seeds.

Ex F. Maris.

Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, inv. ET.45.51. © MRAH, Brussels.

whaling ship at a time when the inhabitants of the island denied access to outsiders. The figure is relatively crude, with its legs held together and having empty orbital cavities. In the course of a recent examination of the piece, a fragment of rolled-up tapa cloth was found in one of the cracks in the wood. This material, produced by working the bark of the paper mulberry (mahute), had prestige value. A moai tangata moko represents a man-lizard hybrid and is believed to have been used by the Easter Islanders to chase maleficent spirits from houses during ceremonies (fig. 6). Other types of objects shown include power ornaments like ceremonial ua (fig. 8) and paoa clubs (fig. 9), and a reimiro pectoral (fig. 10).

A 3D replica of the Hoa Hakananai’a moai brought from Easter Island in 1869 is also on display.

Its back is covered with engravings associated with the worship of the god Makemake and his terrestrial agent the bird-man (tangata manu). A human skull with an engraving representing a tern on it is also featured (fig. 7), along with a bas-relief carving of the god Makemake.

FIG. 7 (far left): Ancestor skull (puku moa) engraved with a representation of a sooty tern.

Hanga Roa Cave, Easter Island. 19th–20th century.

Human bone.

Collected during the Franco-Belge Expedition, 1934–1935.

Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, inv. ET.35.5.291. © MRAH, Brussels.

FIG. 8 (middle left): Ceremonial club, ua.

Easter Island.

Wood, bone.

Muséum de La Rochelle, inv. MHNLR - H.505. © Francis Giraudon-MHNLR.

FIG. 9 (near left): Ceremonial club, paoa. Easter Island.

Wood.

Collected by Victor Champeval, January 1872.

Musée du Cloître, Tulle, inv. 2008.0077.0013.0004. .

The moai along the slopes of the volcano, in some cases buried up to their necks, were not abandoned as they were being moved. On the contrary, they were deliberately situated to stand along the paths that led to this new place of worship.

CHALLENGES FOR THE ISLAND When the first Easter Islanders landed, they found a land covered with virgin forest whose vegetation included many endemic species, such as Sophora toromiro. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the landscape had changed drastically and deforestation reached a climax. New climatological evidence reveals that episodes of the El Niño/La Niña meteorological phenomenon had been occurring in rapid succession and with greater intensity. This is believed to have provoked changes in the rain and wind patterns on Easter Island. In tandem with the ever-increasing numbers of people in the limited area, coupled with the introduction of the Polynesian rat, these climatic changes profoundly altered the original Easter Island ecosystem.

FIG. 10: Pectoral, reimiro.

Easter Island. 19th century.

Legume wood.

Ex P. Loti.

Muséum de Toulouse, inv. ETH.AC.1247. © Daniel Martin. Muséum de Toulouse.

The excavations in which Cauwe participated have made it possible to shed new light on Easter Island history, especially the terminal period of the great moai. The moai of the ahu now appear not to have been brutally toppled, but rather respectfully laid down facing the ground, transformed into crypts and covered with stones. The side of the quarry in the Rano Raraku volcano, which provided the tuff used by the craftsmen to create these statues, is sculpted with particularly large moai. These are now believed not to be unfinished examples, but rather constitute the end point of a new cult that became tapu (taboo).

The exhibition also explores the unenviable situation the Easter Islanders were faced with in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they dealt not only with foreign diseases, but also with abductions, raids, and forced confinements. Nowadays, some 6,000 people live on Easter Island year-round, and they are engaged in an ongoing effort to reappropriate their culture.

Ile de Pâques: le nombril du monde?

Through September 6, 2020 Muséum de La Rochelle museum.larochelle.fr

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