Aboriginal creation myths in Pacific Island celestial art and cultural works

Art, ritual, and religion are inseparable in the aboriginal societies of Oceania. Aboriginal myths of creation and the Dreamtime are rendered in art and permeate the various types of art found throughout indigenous Australia from bark and rock paintings to the modern renditions on canvas. Similarly, the art of Pacific Islands before 1980 is inseparable from their cultural contexts. The concept of art is different in the Pacific Islands than it is for the Europeans who colonized the region. Therefore, it is important to understand both aboriginal and Pacific Island art within their own historical, cultural, and social worldview. Art was functional, symbolic, and sacred, and was tacitly decorative.

The aboriginal Australians have populated their lands for 50,000 years, and during that time developed highly sophisticated cosmologies comprising "what anthropologists say is the world's longest enduring religion," (Kiger, n.d.). Although there is a considerable amount of diversity in the exact formulation and conceptualization of the cosmos throughout aboriginal Australia, the common element is the Dreamtime. Dreamtime is both a time and a space, but it also transcends both time and space. Rendering the abstract cosmology of the Dreamtime in art has evolved over thousands of years.

Dreamtime is rooted in the theory that "the Earth's surface once was nothing but a vast, nondescript expanse of mud or clay," (Kiger, n.d.). From an artist's perspective, a "vast, nondescript expanse of mud or clay" is the starting point of all creation. The creation of the universe is art, and art therefore mirrors the creation of the universe. Moreover, the creators are not earth-bound. Rather, the "ancestral spirit beings rose from beneath the surface or descended from the sky, and assumed the forms of animals, plants, and humans," (Kiger, n.d.). The spirit beings give rise to art and music, providing the impetus for creation as well as the specific forms and aesthetics. The concept of Dreamtime continuously imbues artistic creations with spiritual meaning.

One of the core creator gods in the Aboriginal cosmology is Wandjina, who is rendered in aboriginal cave paintings as a dual being. In this painting, the creator spirit is depicted as a double-being, or the creator is the descending being on the top, representing the mirroring aspect of the spiritual world. This painting also signifies the hierarchical order of the universe, which is also witnessed in creation through the natural order of plants and animals. Paintings like these are rendered on rock surfaces, on the thick barks of some trees, and also on body painting. Many of these paintings are only temporary, revealing the aboriginal appreciation for the paradoxical passage of time. For the human being, time passes in a linear fashion but the Dreamtime exists outside of linear time. The Dreamtime is akin to Plato's forms: a world of eternal, ideal, archetypal forms.

The artists of the Pacific Islands also executed paintings on bark. One of the most famous bodies of barkcloth paintings comes from Tongan civilization. Unlike the aboriginal rock paintings, barkcloth could be used as currency or a symbol of wealth and status in the society. Design elements reflected social and political hierarchies. Tongan women frequently created the barkcloth, showcasing the gendered divisions of labor in the society. Rather than depict deities or religious figures, Tongan barkcloth often showed humans in positions of power. The humans were provided with semi-divine status as political leaders, though, important for revealing the mirroring aspect of the cosmos; just as there is a cosmic hierarchical order, there is also a hierarchal order in human affairs. Deities were ordered and structured, and so were the families and kin groups of the communities. There remains tremendous diversity in the social structures and politics of the different islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia but there do remain commonalities in the role art plays in these disparate regions. As Kjellgren (2007) points out, "oceanic sculpture and painting have emerged from not one but hundreds of separate religions, each with its own distinctive aesthetics, iconography, and supernatural beings," (Kjellgren, 2007, p. 6). For example, tattoo is more localized to the Polynesian triangle but throughout the Pacific region, the human body became a preferred medium to render artistic forms and cosmological patterns. This is evident as much in dance regalia as in tattoo. However, tattoo's portability makes it especially relevant for the seafaring and exploring nature of Polynesian society. Navigation also stressed the importance of art for depicting elements of the celestial world: the stars and directionality needed for successful seafaring.

Masks captured the interweaving of the human and cosmological worlds throughout Oceania. For example, the Maori wooden masks conferred cosmological power onto the wearer. Masks were ritualistic, much more than the barkcloths were, and allowed the wearer to become the deity and embody his or her features. Although the Dreamtime is a concept unique to Australian aboriginal people, similar cosmologies in which there is an interface between the divine and human worlds permeates the worldview of the Pacific Islands. This is evident in the ritual items like masks and sculptures. Like the Tongan barkcloth, though, the arts of the Pacific Islands tended to reflect more than cosmological belief but also social and political status. The arts of the region reflect three primary themes including mana, the spiritual power that infuses not only the artist but the work of art itself. Mana is spiritual energy from a divine source but manifest in the tangible and material items of the world. The second theme reflected in Pacific art is tapu, the rituals that punctuate time and create social order by reflecting cosmological order. Rites of passage depended on the integration of tapu into the arts. Finally, the passage of time is represented by the artistic renditions of ancestral spirits. The world of the living is permeated with the world of ancestral spirits as well as of the deities, and the "aesthetic structures and use of objects" embodies this core principle ("Art of the South Pacific: Polynesia," n.d.).

Gender differentiation is almost universal in Oceania. Women were often considered taboo, with ceremonial items restricted to male use (Kjellgren, 2007; Kleiner, 2016). This did not mean that women did not participate in their own rituals; only that women's ritual dimensions were separate and distinct from those of men. The differentiation of gender roles also reflected the cosmological order held dear to the society. It was as if sexuality and the power of procreation permeated the cosmos, and this power had to be integrated into daily affairs, ritual, and also art. "Although women...also lead active, though largely separate, religious lives, women's ceremonial and social activities do not typically involve the creation of sculpture or religious architecture," (Kjellgren, 2007, p. 8). The division between sacred and taboo spaces was critical to the architecture and arts in the Pacific, and particularly in Polynesia. Sacred spaces were physically demarcated from their profane counterparts, and further still from the taboo. Platforms, altars, and other physical features distinguished sacred spaces, where spiritual energy could congregate away from the profane elements of human life. Men in positions of power could become divine conduits, but female artists also become conduits for mana during the creation of art in the Pacific. Dance rituals required the use of a plethora of artistic elements including body panting, which was temporary and distinct from tattoo, which often ascribed the person's genealogical lineage. Headdresses and other clothing ornaments also designated the person's status, and provided essential mana during ritualized periods of time. Similarly, items used for war would become works of art because war was a spiritual occasion as wartime required the invocation of divinity for protection and prowess (Kjellgren, 2007, p. 9). War was part of the cosmological order, the ongoing and timeless struggles for order out of chaos.

The Rapa Nui moai are unique in that their colossal size and scope are different from the arts of the rest of the Polynesian triangle. Not typically prone to large-scale carvings, the Polynesian people here erected the moai using local quarries. The feat was as architectural and engineering in scope as it was architectural. The function of the moai is not necessarily clear, as colonization eradicated the oral lore that would have allowed for greater understanding of these structures. Likewise, a full comprehension of the spiritual, religious, and political functions of other Oceanic art forms from tattoo to barkcloth might have been permanently lost in the ravages of the colonial era.

In the eras following contact and colonialism, the arts of the aboriginal and the South Pacific changed under the gaze of the colonialist. Christianity permeated the lives of the people throughout the region, leading to the disconnection between art and its mana. Naturally, the art of Oceania depended on mana for thousands of years. Divorced from its ritual and religious context, the art became simply objects of decor that would be traded on global markets. Then there was the systematic appropriation of aboriginal and Pacific Island motifs and materials into western art. Although the art of the Pacific remains in some ways fragmented and distanced from its roots, since 1980, the art of the aboriginals and of the South Pacific has entered the canon of international art in earnest as old traditions from tattoo to aboriginal painting have been revitalized with renewed post-colonial pride.

References

"Art of the South Pacific: Polynesia," (n.d.). Retrieved online: http://arthistoryteachingresources.org/lessons/art-of-the-south-pacific-polynesia/

Kjellgren, W. (2007). Oceania: Art of the Pacific Islands in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Kiger, P.J. (n.d.). Australian aboriginal creation stories. National Geographic. Retrieved online: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/the-story-of-god-with-morgan-freeman/articles/australian-aboriginal-creation-stories/

Kleiner, F.S. (2016). Gardner's Art Through the Ages. Cengage.