Niki Hastings-McFall

 

 

In a recent body of work from Niki Hastings McFall, a Samoan New Zealander, three light boxes are adorned with a thickly layered skin of white artificial flowers and are each constructed in a four-piece grid formation to create the dark shadow and symbol of a cross when illuminated. In this group, White Sunday and SA/C/RED most strongly encapsulate the visual potential for intense and powerful spirituality, the white referring to the Christian notion of purity and the red referencing the Samoan concept of the sacred, the blood and the earth. The third work, Blue 4 Malia, refers to the symbolic colour for the Virgin Mary in the Catholic faith and uses the Samoan word Malia which is a transliteration of Mary. It completes the set that the artist has collated to represent ‘the colonial colours’ of the Union Jack and the New Zealand flag for example. These are powerful disclosures of dual meanings from which we are left to choose.

 

The introduction of the cross in association with light is important in these works. The artist can introduce ideas about the Pacific colonial settler culture as well as her own family’s history. As she writes, research into ‘our family history begins with a paramount chief Tua’ilemafua Avaloloa and his daughter who was married to Joseph Godinet, a Catholic missionary. The arrival of Christianity in our family has effectively erased all history prior to this event.’ Her use of the symbol of the cross draws viewers into a contemplation of both the unifying and destructive power of institutionalised religious faith.

 

‘Of all symbols the cross is the most universal and all embracing’, she writes. The artist enjoys the meanings evoked by the cross, created by the gaps between the grid components, by the shadow of non-existence simultaneously formless yet formed. It is there yet it isn’t there – raising a questioning stance about the very existence of a god (or a greater spiritual being). After all, how do we know it is there when it quite plainly isn’t? We only know because we have the ability to understand two kinds of truth, one of which is based on empirical facts, the other on trust and faith...