Processes of smoothing, cladding, refinishing, covering and ornamenting have tied churches into indigenous ontology since their inception - they are a lived reality as indigenised and indigenous.
Rarotonga’s historic churches were constructed in the mid to late 19th century as Christian evangelism transformed Cook Islands societies. Built in plastered coral stone with walls several metres thick, their architecture of permanence may imply foreign domination, European monumentalism in a flexile Pacific space. But first appearances belie the entanglement of indigenous and foreign beliefs, social practice and place-making that both originally shaped and continues to recreate these places. Following research in Rarotonga in 2014, this paper suggests that the cultural significance of church places is imbued less in permanent structures than in temporal surface overlays. It argues that processes of smoothing, cladding, refinishing, covering and ornamenting have tied churches into indigenous ontology since their inception, highlighting their living reality as both indigenised and indigenous. This is explored through two interrelated areas; first, alterations made to constructed forms, and second, fabric and flowers that are used to veil and adorn spaces.
Surface change
Fieldwork findings confirm that the seemingly permanent elements of church architecture, stone and mortar, timber, fibres and metal, have in fact been intensively subject to transformative physical change. Surfaces in particular have had multiple iterations, with desires for beautification and modernisation being central motivations for modifications that have focused on brightness, whiteness, tidiness and order. This is exampled in the Matavera church in the Takitumu district. Here the graveyard has been partially covered over by a smooth lawn, trees have been removed due to “messy” leaves, and the church interior has been progressively plastered and whitened with paint, tiles and suspended ceiling.
The architectural theorist Albert Refiti’s discussions regarding malama (light, illumination) in the Samoan context may have relevance here. Refiti argues that in Samoan thought the “light of the world” does not come to humanity from an externality as is implicit in Western metaphysics, but rather emanates from a centrality, an internal heart. He goes on to suggest that “architecture … fashions things towards this centrality, which radiates beauty and order” (Refiti, 2009, p. 15). Refiti’s analysis may be extended by conflating this understanding with biblical teachings such as John 1:5, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” and Matthew 5: 14-16, “you are the light of the world … let your light shine before others.” This creates a metaphysical and tangible space from where light, as civilisation, as sanctification, as beauty, emanates. In this grounding, surfaces become agents of spiritual protection and purification, a ritual expunging of “dark places” through the removal of trees and wild vegetation, covering of unkempt graves and flattening out of unevenness and intricacies.
The architect Jeanette Budgett suggests that this “blanking out” of surface detail and colour is a contemporary interest tied to agendas of building “new” and “modern” (Budgett, 2006, pp. 48, 49), reflecting broader patterns of Western cultural export to the developing world (Lockwood, 2004, pp. 6, 7; J. Treadwell, 2006, p. 562). Do these shifting surfaces threaten to deconstruct the bicultural origin of these spaces, reshaping them into a form of acculturation? Following the architect Charmaine ‘Ilaiu’s discussion of the Tongan practice of ‘inasi (architectural appropriation) in contemporary adaptations of fale (houses) (‘Ilaiu, 2007, pp. 89 - 105; 2009a), I argue that Western imports do not necessarily equate to a new imperialism overlaid on architectural surfaces. Rather, they are deliberately purposed to reinforce tribal mana and ancestral claims on land. Foreign forms and materials are variously appropriated, customised and creolised, sliding across fixed surfaces in ways that give church architecture its living meaning and value.
Surface cover
As permanent materiality has shown itself to be mutable, temporal layering on church forms have conversely taken on the iconic significance of church places. Cloth coverings and floral ornamentation that overlay and adorn surfaces are not indigenously originated nor unique to Cook Islands expressions of Christianity. But it is at these intersections of rigid substrate and supple skins that meanings and values have been recontested, recontextualised and renewed, sustaining church architecture as indigenous living space.
As analysed by the anthropologist Jeff Sissons, 19th century Rarotongans used sacred bark cloth wrappings to transfer mana from ‘are atua (god houses) to the island’s first churches (Sissons, 2007, pp. 51 - 57). While early traditions of bark cloth wrapping are no longer apparent in Rarotongan churches, processes of covering, layering and wrapping continue, transferred into mass-manufactured foreign linen overlaid on pulpits, sacrament tables, reading lecterns, and leaders’ seats. Christian and pre-Christian heritages continue to be blended and recontested, as is apparent in headstone unveiling ceremonies where multiple layers of white cloths and tīvaevae (hand-made applique quilts) form dressings over the memorial stone. The recognition of the state of death through ritual undressing of the headstone (Babadzan, 2003, p. 30) releases its tapu (sacredness), and the grave is “unsurfaced” and safe for ongoing remembrance.
Flowers as both church and personal ornamentation bring vibrant colour and scent to the entrenched white of architectural surfaces. While permanent church fabric is persistently cleaned, weeded and re-whitened, temporal surface adornment has allowed for a different shaping of religious expression. Colour encroachment alludes to the symbiotic appropriation between two increasingly interwoven heritages of Church and marae and the continual construction of tradition that both forms embody. The cyclical performance of reapplication and renewal embeds surface decoration in Christian doctrines of spiritual renewal and in pre-Christian rituals of re-dressing the sacred, acting to ceremonially bind community hierarchies and relationships.
It is through mediation at the surface that cultural significance and contemporary realities are challenged and enlivened in Rarotonga’s church architecture. Fixed structures prove tractable, temporal skins endure as enwoven traditions, ever-evolving and unchanged. It may be in the complexities and contradictions at surface interfaces that church places are sustained as living heritage for Cook Islanders.
References
Babadzan, A. (2003). The gods stripped bare. In C. Colchester (Ed.), Clothing the Pacific (pp. 25-50). Oxford, United Kingdom: Berg.
Budgett, J. (2006). Contested terrain: Heritage conservation in the Cook Islands. In T. McMinn, J. R. Stephens & S. Basson (Eds.), Contested terrains: Conference proceedings: XXIII annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: Fremantle, Western Australia, 29th September – 2nd October, 2006 (pp. 47-53). Perth, Australia: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand.
'Ilaiu, C. M. (2007). Persistence of the fale Tonga. (Unpublished Master of Architecture). University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Lockwood, V. S. (2004). The global imperative and Pacific Island societies. In V. S. Lockwood (Ed.), Globalization and culture change in the Pacific Islands (pp. 1-39). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Refiti, A. (2009). Whiteness, smoothing and the origin of Samoan architecture. Interstices: A Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, 10, 9-19.
Sissons, J. (2007). From post to pillar: God-houses and social fields in nineteenth-century Rarotonga. Journal of Material Culture, 12(1), 47-63. doi:10.1177/1359183507074561
Treadwell, J. (2006). Continental architecture – island building: A Chinese court building in Rarotonga. In T. McMinn, J. Stephens & S. Basson (Eds.), Contested terrains: Conference proceedings: XXIII annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: Fremantle, Western Australia, 29th September – 2nd October, 2006 (pp. 559-564). Perth, Australia: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand.
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