AdventuresAboardAvatar: Arts and Crafts Heiva Festival

July 16, 2016

The main reason we sailed back to Tahiti was to check out the Heiva. This is a month long cultural celebration of the traditions of Polynesia. This day was the last one for the Heiva Rima'i, ode a l'artisanat (arts and crafts). There are many parts of the Heiva festival and it happens all over the island of Tahiti in several venues. The biggest is the dance festival held at a stadium on the downtown waterfront, but they also celebrate their arts and their sports. We missed out on the dance contest, so we did not want to miss the art spectacular. We took a bus to the other side of Papeete to the Salle Aorai Tinihau (looked like a building from the county fair), where there were at least 100 display booths.

The arts are many types, including tattooing, jewelry, tapa making (pounded tree bark), tifaifai (pronounced tea fey fey) sewing (sort of like quilting), dress making, basket weaving and of course wood and stone carvings.

There were so many display booths from all over the island groups. We started with the tapa. My favorite was the double hulled sailing canoe. There were two groups of people from Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas with amazing ink drawings on the different types of wood which make the tapa light or dark brown or even white. We ended up buying the guy in the second photo on the dark brown tapa. I loved the detail on the one of the turtle. Somewhere in every turtle I have seen both the awake and asleep gods.

The next two photos are of some very unique sand artwork. It was very impressive in that it was all different colored sand glued or somehow attached to some background and framed in glass so the sand will not come off. The dolphins were especially interesting.

When I said they come from all over, that includes Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Even though they are part of Chile, they are still of Polynesian decent and they brought some miniatures of their stone men.

For some reason I am partial to the carvings. They had just about anything that relates to Polynesia. Turtles and dolphins, miniature paddles, bowls, miniature proas, big or small Tikis. One very large carved ornate fish hook too. Some small and some large carvings. One guy had carved gourdes and then put lights inside so they made a pattern of light as it came through the holes. Very cool, except all the lamps were 220(European electricity) and we live on a boat! They were the most unique thing.

At the far end a man from Ua Huka, Marquesas, was carving a very large wood piece. He had also done the stone one, both of which were taller than we are!! There were a lot of wood chips under the man doing the carving. The detail of the stone work was incredible with tattoos on the necklace and mini tikis around it. Note the big ear ring on the stone statue, these were made from sperm whale teeth back in the day.

One of the extras from the black pearl market, is all the left over shells. So a major trinket or gift shop item are the carved mother of pearl shells. The basket makers were amazing as well. I don't know how they can make so many different shapes and colors to come out as bags, hats or boxes.

One of the cool things about the Heiva Rima'i was that the vendors were demonstrating how they do their work. You can see that it is a lot of hand stitching that goes into a Tifaifai. And the people themselves are so beautiful too. I especially loved this adorable little lady who was using her i pad to show her the pattern to stitch. The ultimate in old and modern coming together! The dresses were lovely and the Tifaifai's are hung as wall decorations in many homes, but their main purpose is to wrap around a wedding couple. My friend keeps hers on her bed like a blanket.

Towards the end of the day, the ladies put on an amateur dance show for us, which included a fashion show between dances. They were having so much fun all trying to follow the instructor lady. You can tell which one she is, because they are all looking at her! And the ladies in the audience were dressed to the 9s! All in fancy dresses with flower hair crowns. After the show was over they all sat down in their costumes for a photo shoot. This is a tradition it seems after all dance demonstrations, that they allow you to pose with them after the show for a photo shoot. Nice!

It was a long but fabulous day and very entertaining!!