Elaborately carved "malagan" · Papua New Guinea - Bismarck Archipelago - New Ireland · ID: 3053605
Arno Henseler, Munich, Germany
Description
wood, pigments, lime, shells, rest.
The present figure combines several animal motifs within a single composition – evidence of the artistic and ritual significance of the piece, though its precise iconographic content, as with many “malagan” image elements, resists any definitive interpretation today: it was originally known only to the carver and the commissioning community.
For in the “malagan” art of New Ireland, animal motifs are never freely invented but are fixed, traditional images bound to specific lineages or clans, their use governed by a complex system of ownership rights. Bird imagery – a subject of dedicated iconographic study within “malagan” scholarship – belongs to this category alongside snake, fish, or turtle motifs. Their appearance on a figure always points to the affiliation and ritual legitimacy of the commissioning party within the mortuary cycle.