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This paper will focus on a spatial duality paradigm that exists at the heart of Polynesian spaces where the notion of private and public is opposite to the Western concept of space. The centre as a limit in Polynesian thinking is the point of extreme transparency where the private individual becomes obliterated. It is the domain of what is termed in Samoa the vä resides. So what is central to any sense of space in Polynesia is the vä or the in-between space, a relational opening up inhabited by deities/community/land/family. According to Alfred Gell, this relational space in tattooing exists in the folding and doubling of skin on the tattooed body collapsing the distinctions between an inside and an outside marking an ambivalent limit.

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