Who is the young girl in Paul Gauguin’s painting Spirit of the Dead Watching? On a trip to Tahiti, the film-maker and novelist Devika Ponnambalam finds out the troubling truth
he lies naked, on her belly, palms flat on the pillow. Her skin is dark as wet earth, hair black as night. A traditional Tahitian cloth covers the mattress, marigold yellow petals against midnight blue. The wall behind the bed is violet-dark with phosphorescent flashes of white. At her feet, a shadow crouches with a black shroud covering the head, so that the face appears as a death mask.
I was captivated by that girl, dark-skinned and naked, lying on the painter’s bed, vulnerable yet powerful. I felt an immediate connection to her. I knew there was an exploitative relationship at the heart of the image, between the painter and his muse, but first I wanted to know who she was, what had been her truth. When I came to write my first book, I decided to try to tell Teha’amana’s story.
Gauguin’s paintings are hard to accept because we see the exploitative nature of his gaze: the colonist’s eye I had to imagine her world, her experience, and was drawn to the legends and creation myths of Polynesia, fascinated by how the story of the moon goddess Hina differed across the islands. Each tale was deeply connected to the land and elements of island life. A grant from Creative Scotland allowed me to plan a trip to Tahiti, where I felt sure I would finally find out what had really happened to Teha’amana.
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